


it's never over (never doubt)

by endquestionmark



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 04:46:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 63,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fiona likes stories, is the problem, though she isn’t half as good at telling them as she’d like to be. She likes coming up with them; she likes selling them; she likes the idea that with the right tone of voice, and the right look on her face, and the right words in the right order, she can change the world, just a little. It’s comforting. As long as she has a story up her sleeve, she’ll always land on her feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's never over (never doubt)

**Author's Note:**

> This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play.
> 
> Thank you to [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit) for committing the original arson, [Mandy](http://whitelaws.tumblr.com/) for fanning the flames, [Radiophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile) for pouring the gasoline, [Mari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung) for watching the entire process from across the street while shouting encouragement, and Emma Jean for making sure that there were no identifiable remains when all was said and done.
> 
> A year after they open the Vault of the Traveler, Fiona and Rhys are still picking up the pieces.

Fiona likes stories, is the problem, though she isn’t half as good at telling them as she’d like to be. She likes coming up with them; she likes selling them; she likes the idea that with the right tone of voice, and the right look on her face, and the right words in the right order, she can change the world, just a little. It’s comforting. As long as she has a story up her sleeve, she’ll always land on her feet, and people are always looking to buy — hard truths, easy lies, everything in between — and it only takes the faintest glimmer of gold to sell a whole pile of slag. People want to believe the best of each other, even on Pandora. They want to put their faith in a beat-up hat and a big smile, and they want to come out ahead, and it’s not like it’s any great hardship to Fiona to let them think that, just this once, the house won’t win.

That’s the catch. Everyone wants a fair shot, but they’ll still cheat every chance they get. No matter how badly they want to believe in the odds, nobody actually believes that it’ll work out like it does in the stories. Fiona hopes for the best and expects the worst, but it won’t make any difference. Pandora will still find some way to throw a wrench in the works and take her for all she’s worth and more. People like her don’t get a last big score, and they don’t get to win, and they never, ever get out of the game. The best that Fiona can hope for is that, in the end, it won’t be a hail of bullets or a deal gone bad or the bottom of a bottle that does her in. She likes to think, eventually, that all that’ll be left of her will be a tip of her hat and a smile, the first accompanied by a final bow and the second fading away before it has a chance to get old.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She’s got a long way to go before she has to worry about either, given any luck, and hopefully she’ll be a long way from Prosperity Junction by then. Fiona doesn’t stand by much, but she’ll swear up and down that it’s a cheap trick to start and end a story in the same place. Prosperity Junction is more and more of a skagheap every time Fiona sees it, and that’s saying something. The client is always right, even when the client is stupid enough to try to make small talk about the weather. It’s Pandora. There isn’t a lot to say about the weather: it’s hot as hell with a chance of _oh hey, maybe the spiderants will come into town and put us all out of our misery_. The sooner the better, if anyone asks Fiona. A reputation should be good for something besides getting thrown out of bars before she even has a chance to sit down, but she still gets the same offers, no matter how many times she says it, and no matter how often she punctuates her refusals with mild violence to really make a point of it.

“No way,” Fiona says, for what feels like the fiftieth time in a month. “I don't mess with Atlas. Not for what you’re offering and not for a lot more, either. I'm not going anywhere inside a hundred miles of that.” She crosses her arms and leans back. “Look," she says, because she can only shoot her way out of so many negotiations before it really starts making a dent in her take. A few scared idiots is good for business; too many, and the bounty on her head will start looking like a twofer: cold hard cash and one less trigger-happy one-hit wonder in the running. "I'll give you names. August'll do it. He might even have fun.” She frowns. “Actually, he’ll have way too much fun, but if you tell him I sent you then he’ll definitely be pissed about it. Find someone else, okay?" Fiona pushes her chair back. "It's easy. Foolproof. An idiot could do it. Find a different one."

“If you don’t fuck with Atlas,” the client says, because it’s amazing how much a cold hard no will do for small talk and social niceties, “then why is there an Atlas stingray outside?”

“Oh, fuck me sideways with a rusty buzz axe,” Fiona says, pinching the bridge of her nose, and notices the client’s expression. “Seriously? That’s what grosses you out? Come on. That chair you’re sitting on is probably made of people.” She watches for a minute, vaguely amused. “The floor probably isn’t that much better. Is there seriously an Atlas stinger outside?”

“Yes,” the client says, trying valiantly to avoid touching literally any surface and comprehensively failing. “I thought they were with you.”

“Hell no,” Fiona says, and turns to peer out the window, eyes narrowed. “I guess some people just can’t take no for an answer,” she says. “Just thinking out loud here. Or — do you think getting punched in the neck is a clear enough no? Maybe I should have broken his nose — though, hey, both. That could be fun. I could use the stress relief. Is he still there?”

“So you’ll do it? Hey? Do we have a deal? Are you — hey — are you even listening to me,” the client says, but Fiona’s already halfway out the door, tipping down the brim of her hat against the sun and cracking her knuckles and so far beyond furious that she’s approaching anticipation from the other side.

“You pompous entitled over-perfumed underdeveloped — oh, wow,” Fiona says, “nice ride, is that yours — impractical industrial corporate _jackass_ ,” she finishes. “What part of _I’d sooner hug a scythid_ didn’t you get, exactly?”

“Nice to see you too,” Rhys says. “Some things never change, huh?” He looks her up and down — scuffed-up boots, loose threads at the hem of her jacket, a notch in the brim of her hat where she barely ducked in time — and there it is. Fiona had forgotten all about how easily Rhys can make her feel like a small-town Pandoran nothing, barely worth the clothes on her back, let alone the bounty on her head. Dead, this time: nobody has anything left to say to her that couldn’t be better expressed with a bullet to the back of her head. It’s a mixed blessing.

“Sure don’t,” she says, and does her best to do exactly the same. He doesn’t look much different either: same impractical show-off boots, same penchant for asymmetrical patterns, same faint crooked smirk — which he has to be doing on purpose by now; surely he has to know — the one that’s just screaming for Fiona to take a swing and split his lip. She’s left with the uncomfortable impression that Rhys has no idea, and that he doesn’t take anything away from her assessment besides a certain decorative fulfillment. Rhys is like that. He always gets under her skin without even trying, even when he’s on the other side of the planet, even when they haven’t spoken in months, even when there’s nothing left for them to say. Fiona hates it. She hates the silence even more, though, and somehow dredges up enough common courtesy to break it. “What do you want,” she says, and is proud of how brusque she manages to make it. “There’s no way you can’t find a cut-rate con artist closer to home. Is it Sasha? Because if you think I’m dragging her into this — again — then I swear, Rhys, I will walk all the way around this godforsaken rock to set you on fire in your sleep.”

“It isn’t about Sasha,” Rhys says, and Fiona deflates a little in relief.

“Tell me it isn’t about, you know,” Fiona says, and sketches a vague arch in the air with two fingers. “Tell me it isn’t, Rhys, come on, you know I don’t want anything to do with that.”

“Sorry,” Rhys says, which is as good as an answer, and Fiona goes frozen with rage.

“Fuck off,” she spits. “Get out of here. You know — I’ve told you — I’m done,” she says, and she’s beyond anger now, beyond fury, absolutely incandescent with it. This is the life that she’s built for herself, dusty and dreary but as safe as it’ll ever be again, and she hates Rhys for walking right back into it as if he hasn’t brought it crashing down around her twice already. She hates herself for being sure that, if she lets him, he’ll do it all over again.

“Look,” Rhys says, and he sounds tired, and she doesn’t care. He sounds more than a little desperate, and she does care about that, but she hasn’t come this far to let a little thing like caring change her mind. “I wouldn’t come to you if I hadn’t tried everything else, okay? You made that very clear.”

“Oh, please,” Fiona says. “I made that clear? Really?” She glares at him. “Who went back off to Atlas and dug themselves in, huh? You know, I thought—” and Fiona pauses and knows, even before she says it, that there’ll be no coming back from this; she knows how it’ll sound, and how Rhys will look, and that it’ll gnaw at her for days, and she says it anyway, because she isn’t good. She’s vicious, and she’s spiteful, and he’s got her backed into a corner, and she’ll do what it takes to get out. She’ll do what it takes to make Rhys leave, even if that means hating herself for it. “—I thought you’d be the next Handsome Jack by now,” Fiona says, and sets her jaw, and doesn’t back down an inch.

She does make herself watch, though: the way Rhys goes wide-eyed for a moment, brown and gold; the shocked blankness of his expression; the way it takes him a second to gather himself enough to be hurt, and the way that he looks at her, as if he’s been expecting this all along. It’s worse than betrayal, and it’s worse than disappointment, and Fiona almost wishes that she’d punched him instead. At least she might have broken a knuckle or two that way, a clean hurt rather than this twisting ache in her chest, this slow corrosion. “Yeah, well,” Rhys says, finally. “Join the club,” he says, and turns away, and gets on the stinger — silver and black, and it suits him; of course he’d gone Atlas — and Fiona spares an indulgent moment, at least, to wish she’d gotten a closer look at that. It looks like it’s been stripped down and souped up to handle standard gravity, with augmented speed and boost. It looks like it’s been well loved. There’s a certain beauty in that: taking a broken thing and making it better, caring too much to walk away. That’s the real problem. It isn’t stories or habit or the thrill of the con: Fiona cares, is the problem, and is far better at it than she’d like to be.

Sometimes, she tells herself, that isn’t a good thing. Sometimes there’s no fixing what’s broken. Sometimes it’s better to walk away.

Fiona turns her back, and doesn’t watch Rhys leave. It’s too dusty for that anyway: all slag, and no gold to make it worthwhile. Fiona’s sure of that. There’s no good story to be had from dust.

 

* * *

 

When she gets back inside, the client is still at the table, slightly less unnerved and considerably less prone to small talk, because Fiona just can’t catch a break. She passes on the job anyway, because it’s not worth the work or the trouble — small-time corporate espionage — and if the client had any idea what they were talking about, they could have just asked Rhys when they had the chance. It isn’t every day that Fiona gets handed a deal and its mark on the same silver platter like that. It’s not her fault if tourists looking to capitalize on the mother of all corporate cautionary tales, with the smoking crater to prove it, are too stupid to know how to do it. Meeting in Prosperity Junction, asking her to do business with Atlas, and then not recognizing Rhys the moment he came over the horizon: any one of them would have been enough for Fiona to demand a double share, and all of them put together spell trouble. Fiona’s a con, not a consultant. She doesn’t get paid enough to care if a client has a near-fatal case of off-world optimism and a healthy helping of naivety to boot.

On her way back to her hideaway — nothing to call home about, just a halfway-livable room on the edge of town with a landlady who seems mostly lucid and doesn’t ask questions or want answers — Fiona has to admit to herself that it doesn’t hurt to think about how pissed August will be when this lands in his lap, either. It’ll be even better if the client tells him about the Atlas stingray, and how careful they’d been to stay out of sight, no idea who it was, but some real shiny tech, he can see why they’re so interested, right? She can just imagine the look on his face. It’s a good thought. She banks it against the hollow curl of guilt in her chest, and the way that she can’t quite forget how Rhys had looked at her: all the arrogance knocked off his face, all his entitlement gone, and he hadn’t even had the decency to act surprised. He’d just gone hurt and quiet, as if he’d been expecting it all along.

Fiona can’t blame him, though it isn’t for lack of trying, and she’ll be damned before she admits it. She wouldn’t bother to hope for any better from Rhys, either, not after this long. Time has a way of increasing distance, and silence even more so: Fiona can’t say that she hadn’t known that this would happen, even a year ago, when she had picked herself up and set one foot in front of the other and put as much of the planet between them as she could. She can’t say that she hadn’t known exactly what she was doing, even then. Add it up, and Fiona has exactly what she wanted: most of the time, life ticks on, and it’s as if none of it ever happened to begin with. There’s a hole in the sky where Helios used to be, sure; there’s a hole on the planet where Vallory used to be, sure; there’s a hole in Fiona’s heart where she used to keep hope, just to make sure it never showed on her face, the one tell she could never quite manage to lose. That’s fine. She’ll live.

This is it. This is what Fiona had wanted, and this is what comes of what she did to get it, and it all adds up to the fact that, these days, she and Rhys don’t exactly have a lot of reasons to expect the best of each other. It isn’t a good story. That happens, sometimes, to the people who get dragged into something bigger than themselves, and Fiona had done what she’d had to in order to get herself and Sasha out, and she’ll live with that. She’ll do it again, if that’s what it takes. Some questions don’t even need asking, not even to herself. Some choices aren’t that at all.

Crossing town, Fiona doubles back a few times just in case, keeps an eye open for reflections that aren’t hers and listens for feet out of step with her own, but nobody’s following her. Fiona doesn’t know if she’s glad or not.

Up a flight of stairs and down the hallway, and the door is still locked and there’s the thread that she left over the latch, so Fiona doesn’t bother to check all the rooms before she shrugs off her jacket and leaves it over the back of the single chair, sits on the bed to pull off her boots. It’s been a long day of pretending that she cares about boring clients and their boring problems and their boring greediness. That’s her life now, though, dust-colored and endless, one day after another. One foot in front of another: Fiona’s good at that, and it just eats up the road when she doesn’t bother looking back or caring where she’ll end up next. She’s had enough uncertainty for fifty lifetimes. At least she knows what’s around the corner, this way. At least she knows what Rhys wants, and how to hurt him so that he’ll never come back, and why he won’t be surprised when she does it. At least she knows that nobody’s going to get hurt just for having the bad luck to get caught in her blast radius.

It’s been a long day, anyway. Fiona could use some sleep, even if it’s just an hour. If she’s really lucky, she’ll wake up in Hollow Point and run the other way, take the caravan and Sasha and get out before she ever thought she could pass off a forged Vault key as the real deal. If she’s even luckier, she’ll close the deal the way she was meant to and get out of the game, find a planet that won’t pull the rug out from under her every time she manages to find her feet and disappear and give Sasha the rest to go off and see the galaxy like she’s always wanted.

Fiona isn’t that lucky. Nobody is, not on Pandora. The most she can hope for is that she’s too tired to dream, at least, the way she’s been for a couple of months now. If she keeps moving, keeps working, keeps running, then Fiona gets to sleep easy. It isn’t a fair trade, but she’ll take it. It’s the closest she’ll get to any sort of closure, and fair dealings aren’t really Pandora’s style anyway. She’ll take what she can get.

Just a minute, Fiona decides, and rolls onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest. She’ll just close her eyes for a minute, and no matter where she wakes up, it’ll be just a little further from here, and the ache in her chest will have faded, and she’ll be free and lonely and new all over again, and she’ll know what to do. All she has to do is close her eyes.

 

* * *

 

When Fiona dreams, it always starts the same way.

She isn’t a kid, not anymore, but in the dream Fiona is as clumsy as she used to be when she needed Sasha to act as a distraction while she lifted watches and wallets in the market. She knows that a misstep won’t be the end of the world — worst comes to worst, they’ll run for it, and go to bed hungry — but it’s hard to make herself believe that when she feels as if everyone is watching. It’s Pandora. They’re in Hollow Point. Nobody’s inclined to generosity, even when it comes to giving a scrawny big-eyed street kid the benefit of the doubt. She hasn’t had to run for her life yet. She doesn’t know how fast she can move, it if comes down to it.

Fiona knows, of course. It might be a dream, but she isn’t a kid anymore. She can run damn fast and damn far, but those aren’t the rules, and her heart is pounding and her mouth is dry and even in the press of the crowd she feels as if she sticks out by a mile. There’s a woman ahead of her who looks like a good mark — scarf pulled over her head, a little disoriented in the dim cavelight and the tumult of voices, not used to keeping one hand on her wallet and the other on her weaponry — and Fiona edges closer, a little at a time, drifting from stall to stall. It has to look like an accident, when she stumbles into the woman, as if she’s been shoved and lost her balance, and then it’s all quick hands and big eyes and if she’s lucky she can get back to Sasha with full pockets and nobody will be any the wiser.

It won’t be hard, anyway: the crowd is unusually pushy today, for the middle of the week, and it doesn’t take long before Fiona’s close enough, or maybe it does. Dreams have a way of skipping the boring parts and making the important ones last forever. In dreams, Fiona can see all the possibilities, branching out ahead of her like a hundred roads, and she takes every one of them, and never has to wonder what would have happened if she’d picked differently. In dreams, Fiona never makes the wrong decision, because even when she does — even when she wakes up tangled in the sheets, even when she can’t get the words out and wakes herself out with a warning lodged in the back of her throat — she knows that it isn’t the only outcome. In the last few moments before she pulls completely clear of the dream, every time, Fiona thinks blearily that somewhere, some her, some other Fiona had chosen differently, and the road had split again and again, a delta of possibility and a star at the end of every branch.

Anyway, she’s close enough to do her best impression of a graceless tumble, bumps up against the woman’s hip and snags the pouch from her belt with no trouble at all, and then she looks up.

The woman has red eyes, and dark hair, and Fiona instinctively palms her prize, tucking it into the cuff of her sleeve. “Sorry,” she says. “These crowds, huh?”

“You are a fool, Fiona,” the woman says, “if you think that I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Fiona reels, because: this is new. In dreams, she doesn’t have a name. She’s a street kid, stupid and green, and nobody cares who she is, beyond a nuisance underfoot. Fiona is nobody and nothing and that’s the way she likes it: nobody to hold the power of a name over her but Sasha, and no way to make her come when she’s called.

“What?” she says. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Hey, you’re probably thinking of someone else. Definitely not me. Happens all the time.”

“Maybe you’re just a fool,” the woman says, and Fiona bristles at that. It’s cheap bait. She shouldn’t rise to it. She does anyway, because it’s a dream, and because it doesn’t matter. She’ll wake up in the end. She probably won’t even remember any of this.

“Excuse me?” Fiona snaps. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you don’t know what you’re talking about, okay?” She crosses her arms. “You don’t know me.”

“I know you,” the woman says. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

“This is bullshit,” Fiona says, and the woman snorts.

“You’re telling me,” she says. “Look. I don’t want to be here either, if it helps.” She holds out a hand, and Fiona sighs and pulls the pouch from her sleeve, dropping it into the woman’s palm. “I don’t usually do deliveries,” the woman continues, “but consider this—” She pauses for a moment, and her expression doesn’t soften, but Fiona thinks that it could be mistaken for a smile, if she tried. “—Consider this an inheritance,” the woman finishes, and opens the pouch; she takes out a deck of cards, and fans them facedown.

“Pick a card,” Fiona says, under her breath, and does — against her better judgment, but that hasn’t done much for her so far anyway — and hesitates. She looks at the back of the card: dog-eared corners, edges soft with wear, and a pattern that Fiona doesn’t quite recognize. “Should I turn it over?”

The woman shrugs, an eloquent motion, and steps back. “My job is done,” she says. “The rest is up to you.”

“Huh,” Fiona says, and turns the card over in her hand, but there’s nothing to see except the same pattern, the same purple marbling that shifts even as she watches. Fiona turns it back over. “So what do I do now?” she says, looking up, but the woman is gone.

Fiona tucks the card into her hatband, and doesn’t even question the choice until she’s already made it, and merges back into the crowd. If she’s lucky, she’ll find another mark before the market empties for the night; not that it’s ever night in a cave, but people have to sleep sometime, and Fiona’s no exception. She taps the brim of her hat absently, and smiles: an ace up her sleeve, and an inheritance in her hat. It’s a nice turn of phrase. She’ll have to remember it to tell Sasha.

Fiona corrects herself: she’ll have to remember it when she wakes up.

There’s a jarring chime, and Fiona looks around, but nobody else seems to be able to hear it. It keeps getting louder, and the noise of the market is getting fainter, and Fiona doesn’t know what happens next — never does, in the moments after the dream disperses like so much smoke — but she wakes to the orange blaze of sunrise and flails furiously for the sound. It’s her comm, still in her jacket on the back of the chair, and Fiona manages to get to it before the chiming stops by flinging herself across the room by ignoring any furniture that happens to be in the way, as well as a complete lack of regard for her own shins.

“Hello,” she says, though it probably comes out with far more consonants than she would like.

“Hey, Fi,” Sasha says, and Fiona groans, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Sasha,” she says. “Shouldn’t you be asleep? Are you okay?” Suddenly, she’s awake. “What’s happening? Is everything alright?”

“Relax,” Sasha says. “Everything’s fine. You’re probably a couple of hours behind me.”

“Or you’re a few hours ahead,” Fiona says, going for a laugh, and there’s dead silence for a minute.

“That’s — you know that means the exact same thing, right, Fiona?” Sasha says, eventually. “I mean — I know I’m always way ahead of you, don’t get me wrong, but give yourself a little credit here.”

“Wow,” Fiona says, but she can’t quite suppress her smile. “See if I pick up next time you call at garbage o’clock in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “Sorry about that. Seriously.”

“No problem,” Fiona says, and slumps in the chair. “I’ll live. Probably. What’s up?”

“Well,” Sasha says, drawing out the syllable, and that’s never a good sign. Fiona sits up again.

“Spit it out, sis,” she says. “I’m getting nervous here.”

“I’m calling in that favor,” Sasha says. “You know, from the time with the firemelons and the—”

“Oh my god,” Fiona says, “seriously? You couldn’t spring that on me on a full night’s sleep? Yes, I remember.” She makes a face. “Wow. Ugh. I’ll do it, whatever it is, just don’t mention the—”

“—scorch marks on the ceiling?” Sasha says, and Fiona could swear that she can hear the smile in Sasha’s voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“—why,” Fiona says. “Why would you bring that up, oh my god! I already said that I’ll do it!”

“Couldn’t resist,” Sasha says. “You always sound so funny when you’re trying to dissolve into the floor.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fiona says. “Make the most of it.” She cracks her neck. “So,” she says. “What’s the favor?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Sasha says.

“Nah,” Fiona says. “I could use a little excitement. Shoot.”

Sasha tells her.

Fiona doesn’t like it.

 

* * *

 

If she’s honest with herself, Fiona isn’t exactly being fair to Sasha: it isn’t a particularly difficult favor, and she can’t really come up with a sufficient objection to get out of doing it, besides that words that come with built-in capital letters give her a rash. That’s more or less all she’s got — a bad feeling and a few rumors and a name that makes her want to back away slowly — and so Fiona promises Sasha that she’ll look into it, and hangs up, and goes downstairs to seek her fortune and an egg sandwich.

She finds the sandwich at a stall in a side alley and completely fails to find her fortune, but there’s a pile of rubble that doesn’t look particularly hostile, so Fiona sits down and wrinkles her nose at the soggy bread and holds the rumors at the very edge of her awareness. There’s something she can’t quite pin down about what Sasha had said, a vague undercurrent tugging at her thoughts as if she’s been here already and should recognize it but can’t quite remember. It’s like having an idea on the tip of her tongue, or a shape just visible out of the corner of her eye. If Fiona thinks about it too hard, it’ll just slip out of reach; if she pretends that she doesn’t care, something will occur to her eventually.

In the meantime, Fiona licks runny yolk off her fingers and focuses on what she does know. She might have been half-awake, but she’s good at remembering the specifics; that’s what makes her such a good grifter. She can add just enough detail to a story to sell it without making it look like she’s trying. Fiona narrows her eyes, and arranges facts around herself like pieces of a map in the dust. The rumors have something to do with Eridian tech, because what on Pandora doesn’t; some sort of weapon, or cache, or who knows what — Sasha had been vaguely apologetic but blunt on that point: “They could just be rumors, and nothing matches up, but hey. No smoke without fire, right?” — and Fiona had been inclined to agree. When it comes to the sort of changes that Eridian tech tends to bring around, it doesn’t pay off to hope for the best. “Not a Vault, though,” Sasha had said. “Sorry. I know how much you love those.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Fiona had said, reflexive, and shook her head. “I mean. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Sasha had said, and she had sounded — not sad, so much as — neutral, as if she was trying to make it easier on Fiona. From anyone else, Fiona would have resented it; from Sasha, it was a kindness that she was grateful to accept. “Bad joke. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Fiona said. “Hey. You really think this is something worth checking up on? I know, I know — rumors have to start somewhere — but sometimes that just means that August’s spiking the punch at the Skag again without warning the regulars.”

“No kidding.” Sasha had gone quiet for a moment. “Look,” she had said, eventually. “If it’s nothing, it’s nothing, right? No harm, no foul, and then I’ll stop bringing up the—”

“Sasha!”

“—right,” Sasha said, and Fiona had been able to hear her grin again. “And then we can call it square. Anyway, it’s kind of your thing, right? Think of it as a side project.”

“I could definitely use some excitement,” Fiona had mused.

“There you go!” Sasha said. “I had a feeling you could. Hey, I have to go, but—” She had paused again, a moment of that same comfortable silence. “—Just take care, alright?” she’d finished eventually. “Of yourself. No more brawls when I’m not there to bail you out, okay?”

“Sure,” Fiona grinned. “You know me. Careful’s my middle name.”

“No it isn’t,” Sasha had said, too reflexive for Fiona to take any offense. “I don’t think you even know what that word means.”

“Hey!” Fiona had laughed, and then sobered up. “You too. I’ll let you know when I find something. Promise.”

“I know,” Sasha had said. “Me too.”

Fiona had sat with that for a moment — the way that the world had become, suddenly, just a little bit less certain and a little bit more exciting, and the fact that she couldn’t help but love it — and then she hadn’t been able to stand being alone in the room any longer, and Fiona had pulled on her boots and her jacket and made for the door.

So: rumors, big ones, and none of them even lining up. It isn’t a con, because she can’t see the shape of it in between the lies, and it isn’t a story, because she’s heard all the ones left to tell on Pandora. Fiona hates to do it, but she thinks that she might need a fresh set of eyes on this, or maybe just someone less inclined to overthinking things. Maybe she’s too close to the answer to see it properly.

It’s so easy to fall back into old routines — plans, and backups, and what to do if those fall through as well — that Fiona doesn’t notice it until she’s almost done with her sandwich, and then it hits her square in the center of the chest, like a lie. She doesn’t do this anymore. If Fiona does this, it’ll be the last time, and then she’ll go back to running short cons and keeping her back to the wall. She isn’t in the adventuring business. She shouldn’t let herself enjoy it too much, because that’s how the story gets its claws in, and then it’ll never let her go. Fiona shouldn’t even be doing this, but Sasha had asked, and Fiona had given her word, and a promise is only worth something if it’s never been broken. A lot of people have made Fiona a lot of promises, and a lot of people have let her down, and she isn’t going to turn into that. Not when it comes to Sasha, anyway: she’s never made excuses to her sister, and she isn’t going to start now.

Fiona is only here so that Pandora can’t take Sasha from her — can’t take away the one gift she ever managed to give Sasha, her freedom and her choice and the ability to leave this barren hell of a planet one day if she wants — the way it does in Fiona’s worst nightmares, when she lets Sasha down again and again.

She hasn’t told Sasha about her dreams. They’re nobody’s burden to carry but her own, and besides, she has other business to take care of now. For a start, Fiona has to find out what the stories have to say about a Sleeper. For another, she wants to know why she can hear the capital letter even when she doesn’t say it out loud. For a third: whatever it is, with a name like that, why would anybody be stupid enough to try and wake it?

Fiona shakes her head. She doesn’t even have to ask. This is Pandora; there’s always somebody stupid enough.

She dusts her hands off and checks her pockets and goes to find a ride out of town.

 

* * *

 

There’s a bus, leaving at sundown, that’ll get her to Hollow Point by the next morning. It has slashed seats and absolutely no suspension, and the windows are boarded over, but it’ll do. Fiona slings her pack over her shoulder and does her best to ignore the flies buzzing around the stained bumper. She doesn’t need to be comfortable; she just needs to get to Hollow Point, and if she can do it without attracting unwanted attention, so much the better.

It’s not so bad once Fiona settles in, anyway, elbow firmly hooked through the strap of her bag. She doesn’t have anything worth stealing, mostly clothes and a few homemade grenades in case she needs to make things a little bit more exciting, but old habits die hard. She taps the brim of her hat, and feels for a moment as if she’s been set ringing, resonating with some sound that she can’t hear. There’s a familiarity to the gesture that Fiona can’t quite place, and then she remembers, and takes her hat off. Of course there isn’t a card in her hatband. It isn’t as if she’s only just woken up, either, but Fiona has a hard time shaking the feeling that she’s been caught off guard.

The bus driver climbs on, and squints in the fading light. “So,” he says. “Going to Hollow Point, eh?”

“That’s me,” Fiona says. “We waiting for anyone?”

“Not a soul,” he says. “I’d get some sleep, if I was you. It’s a long drive, and not a lot to see.” He gestures at the boarded-over windows. “Eh? No chance of you missing your stop, I tell you that.”

“Thanks,” Fiona says, and kicks her feet up on the seat next to her. “Wake me up if I snore.”

“Wake you up,” the driver snorts. “If you snore, I crash the bus.”

“Whatever works,” she says, and listens as he starts the engine and crunches through gears until he finally seems happy, and sets them in motion.

Fiona is no stranger to sleeping on the road; she’s slept curled into corners, in the passenger seat with her knees pulled to her chest, sprawled in the back of the caravan, and she’s been woken up by neck cramps so often that it’s almost a comfort. It’s never pleasant, but there’s a familiarity to it, and she expects to doze off immediately; instead, she finds herself caught halfway between wakefulness and sleep, and unable to follow her own thoughts from one moment to the next.

Adrift as Fiona is, there’s a sort of inevitability to the way that she eventually happens — as she always does — upon one particular memory, echoing and empty and with only one possible outcome.

It’s the Vault. Of course it is. No matter what story she’s telling, Fiona will always have to come back here; she will be caught here, anchored at this focal point, as if pulled from orbit. She remembers climbing the stairs, watching the shifting patterns of light and the odd geometries that she hadn’t quite been able to see, but had understood nevertheless; she remembers the way that the future had opened up ahead of her, dream after dream after dream, and any path that she wanted right there and waiting. She remembers — and it hurts too sharply for her to pretend that she doesn’t care, a pain too recent to have faded — Rhys, offering his hand, and the way she had let him take her weight to pull her up to the dais at the center of the echoes.

Rhys had smiled, then, as if she’d caught him off guard, but there was no way. He hadn’t looked away, or ducked his head, or said something to ruin it, and Fiona had the world in her hand, as easy as that.

The stone of the Vault had been warm when Fiona placed her hand on it, as if someone had been there before her, and Rhys followed suit, and the pieces of it had shifted, like a puzzle box with light streaming through.

Fiona hadn’t even had the presence of mind to be afraid, even though she hadn’t understood any of it, even when the luminescence had expanded to surround both of them, even when she blinked and saw the patterns of the Vault on the insides of her eyelids. She had been overwhelmed, perhaps, or optimistic in her naivety, or maybe — and she must be exhausted to even consider the, a truth that Fiona only ever lets herself glimpse when she’s sure that she won’t remember it, a lie in and of itself — she had thought that it would be enough to have Rhys by her side, facing down the unknown together.

The light had bloomed, bright as nothing, and Fiona had taken her hand from the stone, and she had turned to look at Rhys—

—and Fiona’s skull had split open, and she had fallen into the sky, all the hundred thousand possibilities of the future going out around her like dying embers, and only one left.

Fiona had closed her eyes, then. It hadn’t helped.

When she finally stopped — seeing, feeling, falling — it had taken a long time for the world to come back. First, gravel, ground into her cheek; next, the idea that her eyes were closed; next, the ache in her shoulders, as if she was curled up; and so on, and when Fiona had finally opened her eyes and pushed herself up on one elbow, she had seen nothing but dust. She straightened herself out, slowly and painfully, and sat up and wiped the grit from her face, not caring that it stung, as the dust settled.

Rhys got to his feet first, and he had been coughing, movements a little stiff, but he had called her name, voice rough, and made his slow way over, and offered her his hand again.

Fiona had flung herself backwards then, too quick to pretend that she hadn’t seen him, and too quick for Rhys to pretend that he hadn’t offered, and he had hesitated for a moment before stepping back, hands open and raised as she scrambled away.

“Fiona,” he said, and she had pulled herself upright by then, still stumbling backwards.

“Don’t,” Fiona said, “Rhys, don’t,” and he had been more confused than hurt then, but they both know better now.

Fiona hadn’t watched Rhys leave then, either. She had known too many stories, even then, about what happens to those who look back, and she hadn’t done it then, and she hasn’t done it since.

Eventually, Fiona supposes, the rumble of the engine and the rocking of the bus must lull her to sleep, and if she dreams, then she doesn’t remember it.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up before they get to Hollow Point, though only just, and discovers that her arm has gone to sleep when she tries to stretch and nearly breaks her elbow when her pack gets snagged around her own ankle. The inside of her mouth tastes like dusty upholstery, and Fiona makes a face and flexes her fingers until numb heaviness is replaced by agonizing pins and needles, and then spends five minutes swearing under her breath until her hand feels slightly more like a functional limb and less like a piece of rakkbait. The sun is up, at least, so she’ll see daylight before she goes to ground; Fiona peeks between the slats nailed over the windows and watches the mountains rising up around them, the worn-down smoothness of the older slopes and the crags lower down where bandit encampments spring up and squabble and scatter to the winds from week to week.

It’s home. Fiona doesn’t think of it with any particular fondness, and she knows that it won’t be the same city that she left, because it never is, but it feels good to be back on familiar ground. Fiona knows the rules here. She knows how it works — where to get black-tar coffee, strong enough to strip an engine, and where to get a room for the night for pocket change and a promise, and where she’ll be given as many free drinks as it takes to keep her from fighting the regulars — and Fiona knows who she’s looking for, and why she’s here. It’s good to know where she’s going.

She doesn’t need a crew, not to look into rumors, but Fiona could definitely use a second opinion. She can work alone just fine, but she’s used to having someone around to watch her six and make dismayed noises when she comes up with one-in-a-million chances and outrageous plans. It’s good to know exactly how stupid her ideas are before she’s up to her eyeballs in them. Nobody manages to make fun of her quite as efficiently as Sasha, but that’s sisters, and Sasha’s got her hands full taking care of business, whatever that might be. Fiona has some ideas, but even Sasha isn’t very clear on exactly what she does nowadays. With Vallory gone, though, there had been a power vacuum, and not a lot of people both ambitious and competent enough to step into her heavily armored shoes. “People need someone to call for a job,” Sasha had explained over drinks at the Red Light, last time they’d seen each other. “And I know people, you know? It’s just moving pieces around, that kind of thing. Giving them a nudge every now and again.” She’d shrugged. “Honestly, it’s kind of boring.”

Fiona, looking at Sasha then, had thought that her little sister had always been cooler than she would ever be, with a sort of fond resignation. It had always been her and Sasha against the world, and Fiona had never wanted that to change, but sometimes there’s no two ways about it: the planet keeps turning, and the sun comes up and the sun goes down, and if anybody’s going to be the queenpin, Fiona can’t think of a better person for the job. It’s good to know that, if Sasha needs to, she can take on the world all by herself.

With Sasha busy, though, Fiona needs somebody else to call her on her bullshit and clean up her messes and look at her when everything is on fire with an eye to sarcasm rather than self-preservation. She needs someone who she doesn’t hate, and someone who she can trust about as far as she can throw them, and someone who won’t look at her like she’s some kind of hero. That’s the last thing that Fiona wants — the last thing that she _is_ — and a good partner is hard to find.

That seems to happen to the unlucky few who open a Vault and live to never tell the tale, ever; there aren’t a lot of people left on Pandora who haven’t heard of her, one way or another, and Fiona isn’t too fond of the idea of sitting down with some big-eyed kid who wants to know what really happened. In the first few weeks after she’d taken off, Fiona had started enough fights with idiots who wanted her to tell the story all over again and either couldn’t see the warning signs or weren’t interested in taking no for an answer. Fiona would have thought that the dark circles and endless doubles, neat, would have been enough; maybe she’s just too optimistic. She hadn’t thought that anybody would want to hear any version of a story that goes _so it turns out that_ _you don’t really want to see what’s inside a Vault unless you want to have your life comprehensively ruined_ , but Fiona hadn’t quite expected people to be so completely hell-for-leather bent on disappointing themselves. Fiona isn’t a pessimist, but she’s hardly the sort to overestimate other peoples’ capacity for pragmatism.

She’s started enough brawls for the rest of her life, anyway. It’ll be nice to work with someone who knows better than to ask, and who doesn’t have to anyway.

“Awake back there?” the bus driver says. “Rise and shine! Say goodbye to the sun!”

“Ugh,” Fiona says, though she feels a lot better for a solid night’s rest, even if her spine may never work properly again. “I’m up, I’m up. Are we there yet?”

“For that,” the bus driver says, “I turn us around and drive us straight into hell.” He laughs. “I like you. You can take a joke, eh?”

“Sure,” Fiona says. “Can’t be any worse than this rock, right?”

“You’re right about that,” he says, and the mouth of the cave looms up in front of them. Same dead tree, barely clinging to the cliff face, same pile of beaten-together signs, same long drive down in the dark, headlights throwing up jagged patterns on the rock, before they come down the scree slope into Hollow Point. The bus skids to a stop where the smooth stone of the cave meets the patchwork of cobbled streets and boardwalk pavements, and the driver leaves the engine running. Fiona doesn’t need to be told; she shoulders her pack and makes her unsteady way to the front of the bus, tilted as it is.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t bother,” the driver says. “We always end up back here, eh? Next time, then you can thank me. Always, there is a next time.” He nods, satisfied. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get off my bus!”

“Going!” Fiona says, and does, shaking her head: no rest, or whatever they say, and at least she’s back on familiar ground. It’s good to have solid rock under her feet again.

Fiona knows where she’s going, and she knows that she isn’t welcome there, and the thought puts a smile on her face, even though she’s likely to leave Hollow Point on foot, if not at considerable airborne velocity. She likes knowing exactly what she’s getting into, and exactly what sort of welcome she’s likely to get, and exactly who she’s going to piss off next.

It’s good to be back.

 

* * *

 

The sun might be up on this side of Pandora, but that doesn’t mean much to Hollow Point — cast in shadow, sure, but Fiona only says that to people who get distracted by pretty words and won’t pay attention to what they actually mean — where life runs in shifts instead, and there’s a sunlamp in every establishment worth visiting. When she shoulders open the door of the Skag, then, the room isn’t packed, but there’s enough of a buzz that Fiona tips her hat a little further down over her eyes and doesn’t linger on her way through to the bar.

“What can I get you?” August says, not looking up.

“What do you call those drinks with fifty kinds of rum and a tiny umbrella?” Fiona says. “The ones that look like someone’s thrown up an entire fruit bowl at once, with a fancy straw.”

“I liked it way better when everyone this side of Elpis was trying to kill you, you know that?” August says.

“Aw,” Fiona says. “You’ll make me blush.”

“Sure,” August says, completely unfazed. “What’re you having?”

“The usual,” Fiona says, leaning on a stool. “Smuggler’s. What do I owe you?”

“Don’t break the mirror,” August says, “and we’ll call it square.”

“I’ll do my best,” Fiona says, and watches him draw her pint, shoulders tight with habitual resentment. It might be her, or it might be the fact that he’s still here, running a shithole bar where the sun doesn’t shine and running errands for anyone brave enough to ask. The pity of it is that August is actually good at what he does, if there’s no finesse involved: he’s loyal to a fault, dogged when it comes to getting the job done, and not afraid to get his hands dirty. Fiona isn’t stupid enough to say it to his face, but of all the things she’s considered apologizing for, Vallory’s death isn’t one of them. August hasn’t handled it as well as he could have — he’s still working out of the Skag, for one — but he’s a little more sure of himself these days, a little quicker to put two and two together and think for himself.

“So,” he says, and meets her eyes sidelong. “What’s chasing you?”

“I could use a second,” Fiona says. “Just rumors, nothing big — might turn out it isn’t anything at all — but I could use a straight shooter, someone who won’t put up with bullshit.” She leans one elbow on the bar, gives him the same sidelong look. “You in?”

“You’re terrible at flattery, you know that?” August says. “I’ve heard dead threshers do a better job sweet-talking a guy. Just saying.” He leans over, rearranging bottles on the shelves. “It ain’t looking good, Fi.”

“Look,” Fiona says. “It’s a job. You’ll get paid. It’ll get you out of here for a week, how’s that? Get some real surface sun, make some people nervous, maybe kick a few doors down.” She takes a long pull from her glass, and makes a face at the metallic aftertaste. “It’s like getting paid to go on vacation.”

“Except if I was going on vacation, it would be in the opposite direction of whatever you’re planning,” August says, still talking to the shelves. “Fake Vault key ring any bells? No? Well, let me remind you.”

“August,” Fiona says. “I’m asking nicely. And it’s not like we were going to screw you out of your cut, either. Tell me you wouldn’t be over it if we’d pulled it off.”

“That’s not the point,” August says, but there’s no real heat to it. “You didn’t, did you? So there.”

“Wow,” Fiona says. “Snappy.” She looks into her drink, and a terrible possibility looms, the way it sometimes does when she’s run out of ideas. It’s one of those what-ifs where Fiona knows that she isn’t playing fair, but she’ll get what she wants, and she has to do it anyway, now that she’s thought of it. It’s the lowest of low blows, but this is August — holds a grudge, carries a torch, loyal to a fault — and there’s nobody else she can trust like him, even if that involves sleeping with her gun under her pillow. Fiona looks up, pitches her voice casual, and says to nobody in particular: “I guess I’ll just have to tell Sasha that you’re still sore about, oh, ancient history?” Fiona shrugs. “It’s not me you’ll be letting down, is all I’m saying. No skin off my back.”

“Wait,” August says, straightening up too quickly to be any sort of subtle. “You didn’t mention — I mean, is Sasha — not that I’m interested, you understand, but.” He runs out of questions, apparently, and crosses his arms, glaring at the floor. “You didn’t say that Sasha was coming.”

“She isn’t,” Fiona says. “But she asked me to look into this for her, and you know Sasha. Hard to say no when she asks for a favor, right?”

“Ha,” August says, smiling a little. “No kidding.” He stares at the floor a minute longer, and then looks up. “Okay,” he says. “No promises, alright? I’m not doing this for you.”

Fiona shrugs. “Never said you were.”

“Let me go find Jimbo to cover the bar,” August says, “and you can tell me just how shitty this is gonna be.”

“Sure,” Fiona says, and raises her glass, wincing again. Smuggler’s is decent, for cave brew, but always tastes a little rusty; it’s like drinking with a split lip, which explains her fondness for the stuff. At least she isn’t the only one who keeps coming back like a kicked puppy, hopeful that this time things will be different, when they never are. Smuggler’s always tastes like dregs and old blood; Sasha hasn’t mentioned August to Fiona for long enough that Fiona might feel a little bad, if not for how well it works every time. Fiona has a lot of problems, but August’s heart isn’t one of them. He should be able to take care of himself by now. If he can’t, then he should be a little less obvious about it. Fiona finishes her drink and thinks, dourly, that she’s managed, after all.

“Okay,” August says, coming back around the bar. “You’re on. Grab a table, give me a second.”

“Thanks,” Fiona says. “I owe you one.”

“No shit,” August says. “And hey, do me a favor?”

“Sure,” Fiona says, and then backtracks. “I mean, it depends.”

“Just don’t start talking until I’m halfway down the glass, okay?” August says. “I get the feeling I’m gonna need it.”

“No problem,” Fiona says, and looks around for a table in the back, where all the regulars are too drunk to care and there might be a handy window in case she needs to leave in a hurry. “Get me one too.”

“You’re not exactly helping here,” August says.

Fiona shrugs. “At least I didn’t tell you to make it a double, huh?”

“No,” August says, “but now that you mention it, that sounds like a great idea,” and Fiona really can’t argue with that.

 

* * *

 

The problem with August is that he doesn’t let Fiona get away with anything, both because he’s good at what he does and because he doesn’t care about being rude — both in general and to her in particular — and that means that he asks a lot of questions, which is the point, but also the problem. Fiona needs him to be combative and blunt and antagonistic, because she needs someone to keep asking for reasons until she gives up and admits that she doesn’t know, but hell if it doesn’t make her want to give him a good kick in the shins half the time. At least August wouldn’t take it personally, she thinks. He’d probably kick her back on reflex. It’s an odd comfort, but then Fiona has a sister, so she’s used to a certain degree of friendly immaturity.

Most of his questions are manageable, anyway, and even if they aren’t useful, they’re good to know. Sometimes August ends a call, and looks up, and says “Hey, so,” in a way that makes Fiona want to go outside and kick a wall until something gives, but she can deal with that. He’s pulling a lot of strings and asking a lot of people who she wouldn’t be able to get to on her own, so the least she can do is put up with more than a little incredulous frustration.

Still, sometimes Fiona really does just want to scream into her hands until she feels less like the only sentient lifeform in the room. August asks Fiona what a Sleeper is, which she doesn’t know; he asks her how to wake one, which she doesn’t know; he asks her why it sounds so ominous, which is frankly a stupid question for someone who lives on a planet where everything is trying to kill them. August asks Fiona if Sasha ever talks to her about him, which is one of the rare questions that she could answer, if she wanted to spend the next three days watching him sulk like a kicked puppy. Fiona doesn’t lie, exactly, but she doesn’t answer the question either, just gives him some worn-in line about they’re not exactly the touchy-feely sort and how Sasha likes to play her cards close to the chest. It’s true — she does, and August knows it, which is why he seems satisfied — but it isn’t actually an answer. By the time he figures that out, though, Fiona hopes that she’ll have come up with a slightly better lie.

The questions that Fiona really can’t deal with have nothing to do with the Sleeper, or the job, or Sasha. August only asks those when they’re both so tired from putting together the few scraps they’ve been able to collect that neither of them can see straight, and he always looks like he’s bracing himself for a reply that he won’t like. Fiona doesn’t like being handled as if she’s about to break, and she doesn’t like the look on August’s face when she knows that he’s going to bite his tongue and nod no matter what she says.

That’s the only time August ever asks her about what happened in the Vault. “Not like I want to be asking this,” he had added the first time, hurriedly, “but I need to know, Fi. Are you, you know,” he said, phrasing clumsy with honesty and significance, and he had gestured, pointing vaguely at his temple. “Okay? Like, are you going to go all weird on me? Not that you are,” he said, hands raised, “but I gotta ask. Some real fucked-up shit happened back there, and I don’t want to know about it, but tell me you’re not, I don’t know. Tell me you don’t have a ghost in your head or something, okay?”

“I don’t have a ghost in my head,” Fiona had said, “and I’m pretty sure there’s only ever been one dickhead on this planet stubborn enough to do something that stupid.” Again: not a lie, but not really an answer, if she’s being honest with herself, and Fiona has to be, if she wants to keep track of what is and isn’t true anymore. She definitely doesn’t have Handsome Jack riding shotgun in her skull, which is good to know, but Fiona can’t really be sure about anything else, not when her dreams are always tinged with that vague alien purple, and not given the fact that the last person who opened a Vault wasn’t exactly the picture of stability by the time someone finally put him down.

Fiona’s pretty sure that she’s the one calling the shots — she thinks about it more than she’d like, though, and sometimes when she can’t sleep Fiona goes back through the decisions she’s made that day and asks herself if they sound like things that she’d do — and that’s all August needs to know, for the time being at least. At least he isn’t afraid to talk about it, even if he isn’t going to push, and even if he obviously can’t tell whether to believe her or not.

At least Fiona’s aware of the possibility, and at least she isn’t the only one this time; she hadn’t been alone in the Vault, and she hadn’t been the only one curled up in the dust when they’d come out of it. Worst comes to worst — and that’ll have to be pretty bad, but that’s a bridge she’ll burn when she gets to it — Fiona can always ask Rhys, see what he has to say about it. Maybe there's something in each of their heads. Maybe they’re both getting paranoid for no reason. Maybe it’s just her, or maybe this is just who Fiona is: a selfish, small-time con who’ll never amount to any more than that, who’s hard to love and hard to like and who pushes everyone away anyway. Maybe Sasha’s taking care of her and lying to make her feel better; Fiona’s done that often enough. Maybe people just put up with her because she doesn’t give them a choice. It’s stupid, and Fiona hasn’t thought like this in years, but when she can’t sleep it’s harder to ignore the way that, these days, she just can’t be sure about anything anymore.

Maybe it’s the Vault making her think like that. It isn’t fair of her, Fiona knows. Maybe it’s the Vault. Maybe it’s what she’s seen, and what she’s done, and maybe it’s smart to ask herself questions that she doesn’t like when she can’t ignore what the answers might turn out to be. Maybe she’s just a bad person like that.

When it comes down to it, though, what’s the use? Fiona’s here, and Fiona’s who she is, and she isn’t going to get another shot at any of it. She has to work with what she’s got. August might have his doubts, but if he does, he keeps them to himself.

Fiona bites her tongue, and swallows her fears, and doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

They finally start getting answers — nothing particularly useful, but at least it’s something — around the end of the first week, when Fiona is seriously reconsidering every choice in her life that has led her to this point and apparently giving the regulars the sort of looks that typically end with property damage, according to August. The problem is that most of the game, the way he plays it, consists of waiting so that nobody gets the wrong idea. Most of August’s connections are mercenary at best, and anything inside a hundred miles of Eridian tech sounds like the biggest payday in history to them. Fiona has to concede that, a couple of years ago, she would have had the exact same thought, so she lets August work his sources and focuses on not giving him any more reasons to think she’s carrying around anything more worrying than her usual inflammatory variety of weirdness.

Between August’s people, who aren’t too inclined to answer questions if he isn’t going to give them any idea why he’s asking, and Fiona’s work, which mostly consists of looking at old maps and older stories and coming up with a whole lot of nothing, they finally come up with a single connection. It isn’t worth writing home about, and August doesn’t seem too eager to call Sasha over a lead that might just be one more rumor at best and a flat-out fraud at worst, so he checks one more angle — there’s no way to be sure, not when no two stories match up completely, but that might just mean that people can’t keep track of their lies — and nods at Fiona, ending the call.

“Sounds like the real deal,” August says. “I mean, not that any of this sounds real, but it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

“Remind me,” Fiona says. “It’s a bandit settlement, right? Some old site, blah blah blah, the usual?”

“Wow,” August says. “Glad you’ve been keeping up.” He nods. “Same old — corporate facility, not sure who, only just got overrun a year or two ago — so hopefully they haven’t used it for scrap yet.” August tilts his head. “You ever get the feeling you’re just telling the same shitty story over and over?”

“This is Pandora,” Fiona says. “All the stories are shitty.”

“I don’t know,” August says. “I liked the one where I saved your asses from a giant rock alien that one time. That wasn’t so bad.”

“Speak for yourself,” Fiona says. “You sure we’re talking about the same story? Way I heard it, everyone would have died if it hadn’t been for some chick with a great hat.” She grins. “Swooped right in and saved the day, I hear.”

“No way,” August says. “It was all me. Can’t be both, right?” He shrugs. “Anyway, if we don’t get blown to bits before we even knock down the door—”

“On?” Fiona says. “I feel like you mean _on_ the door.”

“—then we might actually start getting some answers,” August finishes, completely unabashed. “Start out bright and early tomorrow, it shouldn’t be too far, three days tops. You got a map?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, and casts around for something to weigh down the corners, settling on a mug and a handful of grenades.

“Right,” August says, and sketches a course across the center of the paper, not too direct but not too evasive either. If anybody’s keeping track of them, it won’t be too hard to figure out where they’re going, but there’s no reason to run straight for trouble when for all they know they might be heading right into some sort of ambush. Fiona and August have collectively pissed off enough people — personally and by proxy — that it isn’t worth taking unnecessary risks, much as Fiona would love the excuse to kick someone deserving in the teeth. “Look good to you?”

“Sure,” Fiona says. “No chance you’ve got a caravan out back, right?”

“Last time I was in one of those rustbuckets,” August says, “some jackass decided it was a good idea to strap rockets to the back and throw it into space. And then your pet manager threw up on me. Now that’s a shitty story for you.”

“He’s not—” Fiona starts, and then realizes: August hasn’t brought Rhys up all week, and it’s not like they haven’t had other things to think about, but it’s not like August to pass up an opportunity to make fun of Fiona for her fuck-ups past, present, and future; Rhys happens to be all three. “—Look,” she says. “I don’t know about that. You made some pretty great faces when you were trying to get out of the way.” She mimics him. “All _argh_ and _I hate space_. Don’t make me turn this rocket around!”

Rhys isn’t her anything, anyway, but Fiona isn’t going to give August the satisfaction of knowing that she noticed. Maybe he didn’t mean it like that. She isn’t going to blink first.

“This time I’m driving,” August says. “Try not to tear the windscreen off, huh?”

“Say,” Fiona says. “Does your ride still have those massive horns on front? Because let me tell you, it’s really hard to look at those with a straight face and not make like fifty jokes about, oh, I don’t know.” She pretends to think.

“Real funny,” August says. “But we’re not taking that one, not if you don’t want to sleep in the turret.” He shakes his head, and frowns at her. “Hey. You sure about this?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, surprised. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean, I heard you were done,” August says. “No more Vault shit, that kinda thing. Just saying. If you want to call it quits, this isn’t really the way to do it.”

“This isn’t a Vault thing,” Fiona says, though she believes it less and less the more she thinks about it. “Anyway, I—” She cuts herself off, and amends: “—One last time, right? One last job. It’s different.”

“Sure,” August says, and stretches. “Let’s call it for the night, get an early start tomorrow and beat the rakks. Don’t make me wake you up, okay?”

Fiona gives him a look. “I wouldn’t give you the excuse.”

“Early!” August calls over his shoulder, and Fiona turns back to the map, shoving the grenades into her pack and tipping the mug up for the last dregs of coffee, tacky-sweet and burnt. One last job: like Fiona’s never heard that story. No way that’s going to blow up in her face, like it has every single time before.

Fiona had promised, though, and she’s never let Sasha down, not when it comes to promises. She’s told a lot of lies, and doesn’t lose any sleep over it; Fiona’s a grifter, through and through, and doesn’t know what she’d do if she wasn’t one. Sasha had never asked, and most marks hadn’t cared enough, but if anybody had asked Fiona — back when they were still both street kids, dreams the size of the world when they still thought the cave ceiling was the sky — what she wanted to be when she grew up, she wouldn’t have understood them. _I want to take care of Sasha_ , she would have said. _That’s what I want to do_.

Anyway, a promise is a promise, and the thought has kept Fiona going more often than not over the last couple of days, when she’s too tired to read maps and too restless to sleep. She double-checks the details one last time — corporate facility, settlement, probably some sort of archaeological site — and it all fits. It all makes sense, up close like this.

If it isn’t the answer that they’re looking for, then at least it’s a start.

 

* * *

 

Fiona wakes up on time, but only just; she scalds every part of her face from the bridge of her nose downward with coffee, and nearly falls asleep on her pile of toast, but by the time August is impatient enough to come looking for her, she’s ready to go. He puts up with her grumbling for ten minutes straight, and then wordlessly opens the door and more or less tosses her out. It’s just like old times, except that this time Fiona’s relatively sure that he won’t resort to actual violence. She probably has Sasha to thank for that as well.

On the bright side, August’s insistence on taking the first shift behind the wheel means that Fiona gets to try and sleep in the passenger seat of what she’s reasonably sure is a repurposed technical. At least she isn’t in the truck bed this time — she’s still got bruises from the last time that happened; anybody in the back is taking their life into their own hands, or at a minimum most of their internal organs — and at least nobody’s shooting at them just yet. It’s an improvement. Fiona isn’t inclined to be picky, not when she’s trying to catch up on approximately fifty years of sleep and three gallons of coffee.

It doesn’t work, because Fiona just isn’t lucky like that, but it beats trying to make small talk. The weather is miserable, the landscape is the same as it is everywhere else — rocks with an occasional plume of smoke; no chance of tundra where they’re going, though the map had indicated some sort of volcanic upheaval near the settlement — and August answers every attempt Fiona makes at conversation with a monosyllable at best.

In all honesty, Fiona doesn’t really want to know what he’s been up to, and he doesn’t seem to care much either. On the one hand, it’s nice to be around someone who really, genuinely doesn’t give a fuck. Fiona gets hives around people who actually care, partly from secondhand embarrassment and partly because she looks at them and sees far too much of herself reflected. It’s much easier to have the sort of understanding that she has with August: he doesn’t bear any particular rancor towards her, but he’d sell her out for the right price in a heartbeat; he’s done it already, so there’s a certain comfort in not having to wonder what that price is. On the other hand, Fiona has had better conversations with rocks, and boring rocks at that. She gives up on the idea of getting any sleep right about the time that August starts getting that glazed-over look on his face that means he’s seen more or less as many abandoned skag dens as he can take, and Fiona clears her throat. “Want me to take over for a while?”

“I’m good,” August says, eyes fixed on the horizon.

“Okay, well, don’t take this personally,” Fiona says, which is a terrible start, but then she’s looking for a reaction. “But you’re looking kind of glassy-eyed there, and it’s not like I’m going to tear off the windscreen if I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. Just take an hour and then she’s yours again, how’s that?”

“I could use a break,” August admits. “But don’t think I’m not watching you. No stunts, or else.”

“Do I look like I’d try that?” Fiona says. “Come on.” August stares at her. “Come on! Seriously?”

“Rockets,” he says. “On the back of a caravan.”

“That was one time!” Fiona says. “Oh my god!” She jerks forward as he steps on the brake. “Wow,” she says. “Subtle.”

“Thanks,” August says, and kicks the door open. “Don’t make me regret this, okay?”

“Sure,” Fiona says, and scrambles over the seats as he gets out. “You want me to come back for you, or are you walking from here?”

It’s worth it for the look on his face.

When they’re moving again, August stares out the window for a while, and then says, awkwardly, “So. You got a plan, once we figure out what this thing is?”

“Eh,” Fiona says, and shrugs.

“Great,” August says. “We’re fucked.”

“We’ll be fine!” Fiona says, although she can’t really find it in herself to be affronted. “We’ll wing it. You’re good at it. I’m good at it. There’s no way this can go wrong.”

“Seriously?” August says. “You had to go and say that.”

“What can I say,” Fiona says. “I like keeping things exciting.”

August snorts. “More like making my life miserable,” he says, but things are a little less awkward after that — though Fiona doesn’t count on it lasting — so she chalks it up as a win, and doesn’t push her luck any further.

 

* * *

 

After a while, August decides to be a gentleman — or, hell, maybe he’s just bored; Fiona would be far less surprised by the latter — and takes the wheel back. The sun is well past its apex, and the sky is getting the look it does when it’s just about to go dark in no time at all, blue to carmine to black before they make it out to the horizon, and Fiona’s getting tired anyway. August notices. “Take a nap,” he advises. “I’ll wake you up when I start seeing double.”

“Thanks,” Fiona says. Her early start is catching up with her, and not even the hum of excitement under her skin is enough to keep her from yawning so widely that her jaw pops. “Ow. Fuck.” She settles in, as much as she can in the limited space available, and leans one elbow against the window so that she doesn’t get jostled every time they hit a bump. It isn’t the most comfortable she’s ever been, but then Fiona’s been walked all the way from Prosperity Junction to the middle of fucking nowhere without a pause for breath, let alone decent company or a blanket, so things could be worse. It doesn’t seem like long before she’s drifting, too weary to even move when they veer a little to the left, and then Fiona thinks: fuck it. If they hit a tree it’ll serve her right for hitching a ride with someone who thinks that facial piercings can make up for a profound deficit of personal charm.

On that thought — an extremely profoundly ungenerous one — Fiona falls asleep, so maybe she deserves the fact that she only gets what feels like a minute of rest before she looks up and she’s back in the market, cave walls cupped around her like the hands of the world, all over again as if she’d never left.

“Not again,” Fiona says, out loud, because if she’s going to end up in the same dream over and over, the least she gets to do is complain about it. She might have been away for a minute, or it might have been longer; the woman — familiar, now that Fiona thinks about her more — who had called her a fool so emphatically is still gone, and when Fiona reaches up, the card is in her hatband. She pulls it out and turns it over, but no dice: both sides are still the same. The longer she looks at it, the dizzier she gets, and so Fiona replaces it and tries to understand what she’s meant to do next.

“Fiona!” someone says — a voice that she definitely knows, this time — and she turns around.

“Oh, no,” Fiona says, still aloud. “This isn’t fair.”

“I’m sorry,” Felix says. “I know, Fiona, and I’m sorry, but it’s the only way.”

Fiona has a lot of questions, but none of them really matter, now that she has the chance to ask them. This might just be a dream, but it doesn’t seem that way when Felix is standing in front of her, and she could ask him for answers until she woke up and it still wouldn’t make a difference. One of the first tricks that Fiona had learned, back when she was too clumsy to forge a bill but too nimble to believe it, had been misdirection: the more she knows, and the closer she looks, the harder it’ll be for her to see what’s really going on. Felix had never been unduly affectionate, but then it wouldn’t have been a kindness if he had. Fiona can see — like the very edge of a mirror, or a tilted pane of glass — the shape of why he did he had, and she doesn’t want to look any closer, because she’s afraid she’ll see herself reflected. Neither she nor Sasha will fall for that ever again, anyway, but there are some suspicions that Fiona doesn’t need confirmed. She isn’t Felix. She’ll find a different way. Instead, she crosses her arms. “No, it isn’t,” Fiona says, and asks a question that doesn’t matter: sleight of hand; if she’s quick enough, maybe Felix won’t see how badly she wants to ask after all. “Why are you here?”

“Do you remember,” Felix says, “when I taught you how to deal a three-card trick?”

“Yes,” Fiona says, grudgingly. The quickest way to get an answer out of Felix is to play along, and let him lead the conversation as he likes; if she argues, it’ll just take longer, and she might not have time for that. “Stack the odds from the beginning. Make sure they’re watching the wrong card.”

“Precisely,” Felix says, and there’s a note of pride in his voice. “Well remembered. There’s another name for that particular game. What is it?”

“Find the lady?” Fiona asks.

“Yes,” Felix says. “In your case, the lady has asked me to find you, although I wouldn’t refer to her as such for anything other than the sake of the phrase.” He smiles. “You of all people know the importance of patter.”

“Who’s the lady?” Fiona says, and Felix opens his hands.

“Ask her yourself,” he says, and Fiona follows the direction of his gesture, eyes wide. They’re at the mouth of the cave, or maybe they aren’t in Hollow Point at all anymore; there’s a geometric quality to the dome of the ceiling, a certain luminescence that speaks of sky rather than stone, and Fiona shivers.

Vallory had never been kind in life, and death has only made her even more imposing. She sits on a throne of ice, or glass, or clear stone, and her skin has something of the same quality to it — a certain vitreosity, not quite transparent but certainly not alive — and Fiona notices, with a dull sort of horror, that Vallory does not just occupy the throne, but is part of it. Where her feet should be, there are stalagmites; her fingertips are crystalline, and drawn out long and sharp. “Fiona,” Vallory calls, and her voice is still as rough as it ever was, but now it carries a hollowness, as if it is a multiplication of echoes by the time it finds its way to Fiona.

The least that Fiona can do is afford Vallory the same respect — terrified, grudging, and not a little resentful, but real nevertheless — that she always has. “Vallory,” Fiona says, and leaves Felix where he stands. She doesn’t look back, but somehow Fiona knows that once she walks away, he is no longer there; his job is done. She won’t be seeing him again.

“Still as stubborn as ever,” Vallory says. “I hope it was worth it.” Fiona says nothing, and Vallory raises an eyebrow. “Nothing to say for yourself?” she asks. “That’s alright. It won’t change anything.”

“I’m not trying to change anything,” Fiona says. “I just want—” She pauses. “—to be left alone,” Fiona finishes. It isn’t the truth, but it isn’t a lie.

Vallory laughs, and it sounds like the very beginning of a rockfall, clattering in the distance and gaining speed as it goes until Fiona feels that it must be upon her at any moment. “Please,” Vallory says. “You don’t even know what you want! How the hell do you think you’ll ever get it?”

“I don’t know if you noticed,” Fiona says, “but getting what you wanted didn’t work out so great for you.”

“No,” Vallory says, meditative. “No, it didn’t, did it? But things aren’t so bad, you know.” She gestures around, and Fiona notices for the first time the mist rising from the ground, and the way that she can see shapes — rubble, maybe, though some of the shadows look a little too human for that — through it. “It’s no Vault, but you’d be surprised.” The mist clears on her left, and Fiona struggles to make sense of what Vallory wants her to see: it’s all sharp lines, and black creases, and then she understands. It’s Vasquez, frozen in place, his eyes frosted over and his skin uneven with rime. “See what I mean?” Vallory says. “Even wise guys run out of excuses eventually.” She shrugs, and chips of stone slide down her shoulders.

“I’m not sorry,” Fiona says, “if that’s what you wanted to hear.” She crosses her arms. “Not happening.”

“You think I want a sorry?” Vallory scoffs. “Come on. Don’t bullshit me.”

“Why bring me here, then?” Fiona says. “What do you want?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Vallory says, and grins, showing all of her teeth. “Tell me when you figure it out.” She tilts her head. “You know,” Vallory says, “I wouldn’t say that I’m happy now, but hey.” She shrugs again. “Who cares?” Vallory says, and her voice is frozen through, flat and cold and still. “Neither are you.”

The mist closes in then, and Fiona turns, and turns again, but the shadows are gone and so is Vallory, and Fiona wakes up just as the cold starts to sink into her bones. The sky is dark; it must be long past sunset.

It takes Fiona a while to stop shivering.

 

* * *

 

After that, Fiona only sleeps when she knows August will wake her up before she’s in deep enough to start dreaming. It’s a balancing act — she isn’t the only one who’s a little more at ease when they’re on the move, and August consequently seems a little less inclined to question her sanity, if not her judgment — and Fiona doesn’t want to give him a reason to change that, even if it means she’s a little more restless and a little less patient. At least he hasn’t noticed the dark circles under her eyes, or if he has then August must write it off as the result of sleeping in shifts and never quite getting comfortable. It isn’t the first time Fiona’s had to hide something like this; she never used to like it when Sasha got worried about her, either. Fiona’s an old hand at pretending that everything’s just fine. This isn’t like the time that she tried to prove that her arm wasn’t broken and passed out. By comparison, this isn’t even a challenge.

By the end of the second day, it’s getting hard to tell if Fiona’s been here before, or if she’s just seen so much of the planet in the last year and a half that it all looks the same by now: probably it’s a little bit of both. The landscape is turning, slowly, to waste as they pass through it. Instead of the worn-down, friendly peaks of the desert, the mountains here are sharp and glassy, like slag rock, and Fiona gets the sense that nobody lives here who gets a choice about it.

The colors are different, too. Instead of ochre and dust, the slopes are the color of an old bruise, and the sky is mottled to match: purple fading to red, where the curve of the horizon throws up a little extra light, or maybe it’s the lava. Every now and then a plume of smoke comes up, ground cracking as they pass over it, and it isn’t quite the same color as her dreams, but Fiona will be glad when they have what they’re here for and can get gone.

The further that they go, the more Fiona’s sure. Distracted as she is by exhaustion, and as hard as she’s trying to be professional — it’s a job, it’ll be over before she knows it, there’s no point asking questions that mean dragging things out any longer than she has to — Fiona knows that she’s been here before. In the wastelands, the horizon changes from one week to the next, never mind however long it’s been for her, so it’s not as if she can rely on landmarks, but Fiona feels like she’s walking the same path over and over, getting a little closer to the answer every time. Keep peeling away lies and there’s always something true at their heart, even if it’s just another story: that doesn’t make it matter any less.

Fiona isn’t driving when the ruins appear between the curved peaks of the horizon, which is why she notices first. “Hey,” she says, and points until August spots them as well. “Looks like that’s our facility.” He grunts. Fiona can’t blame him. “Any idea who’s living there now?”

“No idea,” August says. “Know anybody stupid enough to want to set up camp next door to Hero’s Pass?”

“Lots of people,” Fiona says. “That doesn’t mean they’re stupid enough to actually do it.”

“Exactly,” August says. “So either they know something we don’t or they can’t think straight to save their own lives.”

“Might be both,” Fiona says.

“Just keep talking,” August says. “I feel better already.”

“Hey!” Fiona says. “It never hurts to assume the worst.”

“Yeah it does,” August says. “Sometimes the worst sets you on fire.”

“And sometimes the worst is an old friend,” Fiona says, and pauses to think. “Wait. Did that make sense?”

“Nope,” August says. “Shut up. Don’t scare everyone away before I get to break some heads. Three days around you is enough to make anyone violent.”

“Shutting up now,” Fiona says, just to see August twitch, and smirks out the window.

In retrospect, Fiona thinks, it isn’t hard to see why Sasha and August got on so well. August likes anything that inflicts maximum damage and is impossible to forget, and Sasha makes appreciative noises about anything with a massive blast radius. Not that Fiona would call that any of that a good thing, but still: it’s not hard. Horrifying, yes; predictable, yes; difficult, no.

It’s hard to get a good view of the settlement, especially when they have to take endless detours to avoid outcroppings; once, Fiona could swear that they round a spire that sinks into he ground the moment they’re past, bubbles rising from the molten crater that it leaves behind. Eventually, though, her line of sight is relatively clear, and Fiona looks at August. “No way,” she says. “You have to be shitting me.”

“Hey,” August says. “This is news to me too. Even I wouldn’t have guessed they’d be stubborn enough to stick it out.” He frowns. “Honestly? I’m surprised the slag eruptions didn’t blow them all sky-high.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, because the alternative is swearing until she runs out of breath, and she isn’t that interested in giving August an aneurysm just yet. “Wasn’t this on the map?”

“Wasn’t it your map?” August retorts, not missing a beat.

“It might have been an old one,” Fiona says, defensive. “You try finding an up-to-date map anywhere on this rock! Sometimes you get a bunch of rakk hives on the move and hey, look at that, wasn’t there a town there just last week?” Fiona sighs, exasperated. She’s been too caught up in the details, and this isn’t too bad, but now they’ll just have to improvise and hope for the best. “Let’s just hope they’re friendly.”

“What happened to assuming the worst, huh,” August says, but he waits until they’re visible from the corrugated ramparts before he brings them to a stop and kills the engine. “If you get us killed, I swear, Fiona—”

“Don’t worry,” Fiona says as airily as she can. “Have I ever gotten you killed before?”

“—Is this a joke?” August says.

Fiona looks at him, and decides that this isn’t worth it. “No,” she says, and starts walking. “I’m completely serious.”

There’s a clattering from the top of the escarpment, and August snarls. “Aw, come on!”

“Just follow my lead,” Fiona says, and then they’re surrounded by masked bandits, but she’s only looking for one of them in particular. “Hey!” she says. “Careful. We’re not here for trouble.” She pauses for a moment, considering. “Well, maybe he is,” Fiona amends, and jerks her head at August.

“He definitely is,” a familiar voice says, and the circle of bandits parts. “Just don’t give him a reason to find it, right?”

“Right,” Fiona says, immensely relieved. “Hey, Vaughn.”

“Fiona,” Vaughn says, arms open, and Fiona hadn’t realized it, but she’s missed him. “Long time!”

“I missed you too,” Fiona says, and throws her arms around Vaughn’s shoulders. She can’t help smiling, and thinks: maybe she hadn’t realized it either, not until now, but she’s missed this as well.

There’s no point getting used to it, but Fiona closes her eyes, and for a moment everything is just a little bit better, so maybe it’s all right for now, she thinks. Maybe, if it isn’t too much, Fiona can get away with this.

It’s good to know that she still has friends.

 

* * *

 

The wreckage of Helios hasn’t gotten any more hospitable in the last year, but it was never exactly built for comfort anyway, and it’s only gotten spikier since. The clifftop control room, at least, has been repurposed as a sort of war room, maps spread over every available surface. “Wow,” Fiona says. “Big plans, huh?” She can’t make head or tail of the diagrams — beyond the standard notations, which are obscured by dust and coffee for the most part —there’s a second layer to whatever they’re trying to figure out. It’s like listening in on a familiar conversation in a different language: the tone is close enough that Fiona can get the gist of what’s going on, but the specifics are elusive.

“Yeah!” Vaughn says. “Turns out that, hey, slag might kill basically anything that grows, but if you’re willing to wait a couple hundred years — or if you put it under extreme thermal stress — you get pretty good land.” He shrugs. “And from personal experience I can definitely tell you that there isn’t a lot more stressful than dropping a, oh, let’s call it massive? A massive space station, right out of orbit, straight onto slag wasteland. That’ll do it.” Vaughn puts his hands on his hips. “I mean, it’s not perfect. Everything tastes a little bit like burned rubber, and you have to keep the skags out, otherwise they get all—” Vaughn gestures, comprehensively and horribly, and finishes, a little weakly: “—bubbly.” Fiona winces with her entire body. She never needs to imagine that ever again. “But hey! It’s a start. We’re working on it.”

“I can never unthink that,” Fiona says. “Bubbly. Wow.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Vaughn says. “If it helps, me neither, and I actually have to look at it sometimes.”

“No, look, I needed a little abject horror in my day,” Fiona says. “And that’s kind of awesome. You’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks!” Vaughn says. “But I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you didn’t drive all this way because you heard about extreme community gardening, Pandora edition.”

“Sorry,” Fiona says. “If it helps, I have a black thumb. Can’t even keep firemelons alive.”

“She means we’re here on business,” August interjects, because he’s already been quiet for five minutes, bar some minor background intimidation of the unfortunate Hyperion survivors in the room, and Fiona’s already pushed her luck as far as it’ll go. “You get any news up here, or is it all motivational posters?”

“We get news!” Vaughn says. “Most of it is like, oh, hey, you know that settlement you wanted to trade with? You can’t, because it exploded. Or disappeared. Or got bored and turned into an all-inclusive cage match, and now there’s only one person left alive to take calls.” He laughs, a little nervously, and Fiona glares at August. “This is Pandora. No news is good news.”

“Sure,” August says, glaring right back. “Well, I got news for you. We don’t care about—”

“August,” Fiona says, because it’s that or throwing a bucket of water at him, and she’s all out, “go find a rock and growl at it until you feel better, okay? I’ll take care of the talking.”

For a second Fiona thinks that August is going to take a swing at her, but she stands her ground.

“—Just saying,” August grumbles. “I don’t like it here, is all.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Fiona says, but she gets it. This is old ground, with old ghosts, and August must be feeling the absence of one of them in particular. “The sooner we figure this out, the sooner you can leave,” she offers, voice steady and even, pitched to make him feel like she doesn’t like this either, and August crosses his arms, but eventually he stands down. “Thank you,” Fiona says.

“Yeah,” August mutters, and pushes his way out of the room.

“Wow,” Vaughn says. “You know, don’t take this personally, but I did not miss that.”

“He’s still getting used to this,” Fiona says. “But he isn’t wrong. I don’t like this business either.”

“Join the club,” Vaughn says. “So what can I help you with?”

“Have you heard of any sort of — ugh,” Fiona says. “This sounds so stupid out loud — anything like a Sleeper?” She shrugs, helpless. “I mean, anything at all. Rumors, bad dreams, anything left in the computer systems. We’re chasing ghosts here.”

“Sleeper,” Vaughn says. “Honestly? That doesn’t ring a single bell. Nada.” He frowns. “I don’t like the sound of it, though.”

“Me neither,” Fiona says. “Isn’t it funny how you can just, you know,” and she waves her hands vaguely.

“Hear the capital letter?” Vaughn says, and she grins. “Yeah. I get twitchy around those.”

“No kidding,” Fiona says. “Anyway, maybe it’s just a rumor. A couple of people said that you — well, this settlement — might know something about it. Old facilities, dig sites, you know the drill.”

“Yeah,” Vaughn says. “Same old, right?” He shrugs. “Sorry. I wish I could help, but I’ve got nothing.” He brightens up. “If you don’t mind staying the night, though, I can run it through the databanks, see if I can come up with anything. I mean, some of the files look like someone used them as a word search, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Really?” Fiona says. “I mean, that — you don’t have to, but seriously — you’re a lifesaver, Vaughn.” She pushes her hair back out of her face.

“Hey,” Vaughn says. “No problem. I mean, you’re the one who has to keep August from chewing on the rug, so honestly I think I might have the easier job here.”

“You’re telling me,” Fiona says.

“Why are you even working with him?” Vaughn asks. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s very good at — well — violence, but I didn’t think you and him were on the, uh, best of terms.”

“Sasha asked me,” Fiona says. “I mean, not to work with August, but to find out about this whole Sleeper thing, and hey.” She aims for nonchalance, but even Fiona can tell that she’s missed it by a mile. “Keep your enemies closer, right? Not a lot of people left this side of Eden who I can trust with something like that.”

“Yeah,” Vaughn says, “sure,” and Fiona narrows her eyes.

“Spit it out,” she says. “I won’t get mad, I swear.” Vaughn gives her a look, and Fiona reconsiders, and amends: “Probably.”

“I mean, I can think of someone,” Vaughn says. “Not to name any names here, but: rare company, didn’t you say?” He isn’t glaring, exactly, because that isn’t how Vaughn does things, but Fiona can’t meet his eyes without feeling that same guilt, a hollowness in her chest. “Look,” he says. “I don’t want to ask — believe me, I really don’t — but what happened? I know you’re allergic to the word, but when all is said and done you were pretty good friends.”

“Were,” Fiona says. “Is that what he’s saying these days?”

“Hey,” Vaughn says. “You two used to insult each other the way I say good morning, like you were having fun doing it. Last I heard, you were doing a pretty good job burning bridges on your end.”

“Yeah, well. It takes two, right?” Fiona says, and catches herself: she isn’t doing a great job of not being angry. She’s doing an even worse job of not caring. “Sorry, look,” she says, and presses two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “It’s been a shitty few days.”

“Looks like it,” Vaughn says — not a dismissal, quite, but an agreement to put this aside and come back to it later — for which Fiona is fervently grateful. “Wait here. I’ll find you some blankets and a spare bed. Get some sleep and I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“Thanks,” Fiona says, and Vaughn shrugs, expression halfway back to a smile. When he’s halfway out the door, though, she can’t help but call after him. “Vaughn!”

“Yeah?” Vaughn says, half-turning to look at her over his shoulder.

“You’re wrong,” Fiona says, and she doesn’t want to believe it either, but she’s too tired for anything but the truth. “He’s wrong. I’m still his friend, you know.”

“I know,” Vaughn says. He sounds tired as well, now, and Fiona regrets calling out to Vaughn if it means making him carry this particular weight as well. There’s no point now. She doesn’t know what she’s trying to accomplish. Vaughn sounds very weary, and very certain, and he says: “I know, Fiona.”

Fiona doesn’t have much heart left to break, but that nearly does it.

 

* * *

 

Fiona doesn’t sleep particularly well, but at least she doesn’t wake up with her knee jammed into her face, so it’s an improvement over the last few days at least. Either August has spent a good ten hours terrorizing innocent formerly corporate waste denizens, or he’s had a better night than her, but either way he’s considerably more amicable — or dazed at the very least — when Fiona smooths the wrinkles out of her trousers and shakes the dust from her jacket and goes in search of breakfast. Fiona’s never liked much about Hyperion, even before it was a pile of suspiciously convenient rubble and ex-employees, but at least they have working coffee machines. It’s a considerable improvement over her usual fare, burnt from the bottom of a saucepan.

“So,” Vaughn says, when they’re gathered around in the repurposed control room, where she and August have made quick work of eggs and toast and fruit with undertones of burnt rubber. “I have good news and bad news, but I’m not telling you the bad news until you’ve finished your coffee, so let’s start with the positive.”

“Let me tell you,” August says, “that is not a great start.”

“I know,” Vaughn says, sheepish. “But look at it this way. The Sleeper definitely isn’t nothing.”

“I thought you said we were starting with the good news,” Fiona says to the bottom of her mug.

“Well, sometimes you have to explain the bad news first!” Vaughn says. “The real good news is that it’s one of those long-term things, you know, only comes around every couple of centuries, not a problem unless something goes really wrong in the meantime.”

“Isn’t that what they said about the Destroyer?” Fiona asks.

“I mean, yes,” Vaughn says, “but how much went wrong there? Everything! Everything went wrong, and then most of the people involved died, so I don’t think we really have to worry about a repeat performance.”

“I’ve heard that before,” August says.

“Look,” Vaughn says. “Next time I’ll start with the really bad news, and then you can drop-kick me out the window and have done with it, how’s that?”

“Wait, there’s more?” Fiona asks. “I mean, not to be a downer or anything, but _unless something goes really wrong_ isn’t exactly comforting, as good news goes.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Vaughn says. “There’s rumors, right, and then there’s what I found, and they don’t line up at all. It’s like someone heard of it and decided to make up an entirely new story, that kind of thing. I mean, sure, everything points to some sort of Eridian involvement, and it’s pretty safe to assume that it isn’t a good thing, but that goes without saying, you know? I could have made that story up in my sleep, and I don’t even know that much about Pandoran history. It could just be a coincidence that this is coming up now.”

“So what are you saying?” August says. “It’s all bullshit?”

“I don’t know!” Vaughn says. “It could be, or maybe someone heard something and filled in the blanks and got it wrong, or maybe they actually know something and decided to throw everyone off their trail.” He shrugs. “I’m just guessing. Like you said, there really isn’t a lot to work from here.”

“No, hang on,” Fiona says. There’s something familiar about all of this. It’s misdirection, sure, but this is Pandora; everyone wants to tell a good story, and that means either treasure or weaponry. “Wait. What rumors are you talking about?”

“Same as you,” Vaughn says. “I called a few people, but they’d all talked to him anyway.” He nods at August. “Nothing you haven’t heard already.”

It’s a con. It has to be: the only way to get an entire planet interested in the same rumor is to make sure that nobody knows anything about it, and then people will turn themselves inside-out for even a hint of a clue. Fiona knows, because she’s done it. The neatest way to sell a story without lying is to know just as little about it as the next person, and then the mark feels good about themselves, and then Fiona has them in the palm of her hand. It’s elegant.

That doesn’t mean that Fiona isn’t angry, but that can wait until she knows where to direct it. It pays to let this kind of thing simmer.

There’s a commotion outside, and Vaughn raises his hand. “Hang on,” he says. “Sounds like we’ve got incoming.”

“Seriously?” August says, and starts to his feet. “I swear, Fiona, if this is some kind of trap—”

“Then it’s for both of us,” Fiona says. “You think I’d be here if I had any other choice? No offense,” she adds, aside to Vaughn, “but this isn’t exactly my dream vacation.”

“None taken,” Vaughn says, leaning sideways to get a better look. “If it helps, I don’t think they’re here for trouble. It’s some kind of runner, I think, but not one I’ve seen before.” He looks back. “I think it’s safe to assume you weren’t expecting company?”

“Nope,” Fiona says. “Like I said, it’s just August and me.” She considers. “And you, obviously, and — I mean, not really, but — oh, fuck’s sake,” Fiona says, because it’s just occurred to her: there’s a reason this sort of misdirection is so familiar, based on a story defined mostly by its absence. It’s what she’d do, sure, but Fiona isn’t the only one on Pandora who knows this trick.

The runner swerves to a halt, much closer than August’s technical, still where they left it, and August glares. “Seriously?” he says. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Of course Fiona isn’t the only grifter on Pandora who knows how to start a good rumor. She knows how to do it like this, though, all wrapped up and just waiting to take off, and Fiona has a feeling that she recognizes whose work this is, too.

Fiona should know. She taught her.

August crosses the room to lean over, staring out the window.

It isn’t a question, but Fiona can’t tell what he’s thinking when he says: “Sasha?”

Of course. “Sasha,” Fiona says, and can’t tell what she means by it either.

Then someone else comes around the front of the car, and Fiona doesn’t even bother trying to figure it out anymore, because she’s too busy glaring. “Motherfucker!” Fiona says.

“Nice,” August says.

“Screw you,” Fiona says. “No fucking way.”

They’re a long way up, and it’ll be a while before they gets to the ramparts, and Fiona still isn’t sure she’s had enough coffee, but there’s no point hiding it. She could spot Rhys a mile off, and he’s much closer than that, making his way through the rubble. Fiona feels as if she’s been kicked in the chest.

“Motherfucker,” she says again, and even Vaughn doesn’t have anything to add to that.

 

* * *

 

Fiona thinks about kicking the window out and jumping to either freedom or certain death. She really does. In the end, though, she wastes too much of her breath on swearing and too much of her time on ignoring the way that Vaughn looks like he would literally rather be anywhere else, up to and including the crater of an active volcano. Fiona can’t blame him: she feels exactly the same way. By the time she’s come to this conclusion, though, she can hear footsteps on the stairs outside the open door, and Fiona revises her plan. Maybe she can break the window and throw Rhys out instead. He’ll be fine, and it’ll make her feel so much better. Sasha might be pissed, but Fiona can live with that.

“Hey, Fi,” Sasha says, in the tone of voice that she only uses when she knows just how pissed Fiona is about to be, never mind that she’s the reason, and Fiona wheels around.

“You have got to be shitting me,” she says, voice completely flat, and of course that’s when Rhys walks into the room. It’s the worst moment possible. He couldn’t miss it if he tried.

“Hey, Fiona!” Rhys says, because apparently he’s just as happy to be here as she is. “Man! It’s so great to see you again after, oh, has it been a whole week already? I really missed the way that I can always tell when you’re talking about me because it sounds like you’d rather be shoveling rakk piles.”

August snorts, and they both round on him. “Great,” Rhys says. “Just when I thought today couldn’t get any worse. Tell me he’s housebroken.”

“Seriously?” Fiona says, turning on Sasha. “You couldn’t get away with bringing strays home when you were ten.”

“Hey!” Rhys and August say in unison — Rhys to Fiona, and August to the back of Rhys’ head — and Vaughn silently puts his face in his hands.

“Wow,” Sasha says, with what looks like genuine astonishment. “I mean, I knew this was a terrible idea, but I didn’t know it was going to be just this ridiculous. Am I seriously the most mature person in this room?”

“No!” Fiona says, ignoring the way that Rhys snorts. “You know what a mature person would have done? Called ahead and warned me so that I could, I don’t know, set myself on literal fire before you got here!”

“I mean, I’m — probably — never mind,” Vaughn says, as they all turn to look at him. “Not the time. Pretend I never said anything.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time,” August says.

“Vaughn,” Rhys says, voice tight. “It’s great to see you, but don’t take it personally when I say that I would rather be thrown out of a moving caravan than be here right now, okay?”

“No problem,” Vaughn says. “Though I wouldn’t give anybody ideas.”

“Don’t worry,” Fiona says. “I was already thinking about it.”

“Wow. Remember that time — not to bring an innocent bystander into this,” Rhys says, turning to Sasha, “and don’t get too used to that, but — when you tried to actually do that? And then you left me on the floor for a couple of hours? I could have had brain damage!”

“You probably did,” Fiona says.

“See!” Rhys says. “Exactly! Remember that? Man, I’m so glad we can put all that behind us.” He crosses his arms. “Oh, wait. We can’t, because that was your fault.”

“Okay!” Sasha says, exasperated, and raises her hands. “Never mind! I should have just let you stumble all over the planet chasing your own tails and tracking down false leads for a decade or two first. I get it.” She puts her hands on her hips. “Seriously?”

“I’m sorry,” Fiona says, “who started those rumors in the first place? I don’t remember where I heard about this, but, oh, hey! Wait, I do.” She stares at Sasha. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I wouldn’t mind getting some actual answers.”

“Nah, this is fine,” August says, and Fiona glares at him. “What? It’s great. I might get snacks. It’s like getting to say everything that’s in my head, and nobody’s even getting mad at me for it.”

“Self-sabotage,” Sasha says. “You’ve never heard of it, have you.”

“Did I say something?” August says. “Don’t mind me. Just go back to what you were doing.”

He doesn’t have to say it twice. Rhys takes a deep breath, and Fiona plasters on her most obnoxious fake smile, and he’s probably about to say something horrific — not that Fiona doesn’t deserve it, but still: she may as well roll with the punches — when Vaughn wanders up, deceptively nonchalant, and just slaps his hand over Rhys’ mouth.

“As profoundly scarring as this has been,” he says, “I, for one, already have way too much to replay in my head when I can’t sleep.” Rhys makes a muffled noise that, nevertheless, conveys his outrage surprisingly well. “And I wouldn’t mind answers,” Vaughn goes on, “and I feel like this could go on for a while if nobody does anything, so.” He looks at Rhys. “If I take my hand away, can you not insult each other for, oh, five minutes? Maybe?”

Rhys glares at Fiona and hums furiously.

“Okay!” Vaughn says. “I’m going to pretend that you said yes. Fiona, I don’t want you to bite my fingers off, so I’m not going to stop you, but: five minutes? Please?”

“I’ll stop if he does,” Fiona says mutinously.

“Aw,” Sasha says. “You sound just like me. When I was five.”

“Not helping!” Vaughn says, and takes his hand away from Rhys’ mouth.

“No, but it was too good to pass up,” Sasha says, and pulls out a seat at the head of the table. August and Fiona have a brief, silent negotiation over the chair to her right, which Fiona wins, though she doesn’t miss the way that Rhys sits as far away from her as possible. _I thought you’d be the next Handsome Jack by now_. If Fiona’s still thinking about it, there’s no way that Rhys has forgotten; Fiona can’t really blame him, but she can glare all the way down the table, even if she’s sorry. Fiona’s complicated like that. “So,” Sasha says. “Where do you want me to start?”

Fiona and Rhys look at each other.

“How about the beginning?” Rhys says, finally.

Fiona almost smiles.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t that great a story when Sasha tells it, either, but at least it isn’t Fiona’s side this time, and Fiona likes seeing things from different perspectives. Sasha embellishes less than Fiona does, or at least she’s a little more subtle about it. Nobody gets flung halfway across Hollow Point, which is a loss in Fiona’s opinion, but then she doesn’t really want to hear about how she’d chased Rhys hell-for-leather across the scorched plain screaming like an entire flock of rakks. It’s bad enough when Fiona thinks about it. She doesn’t need to know what it looked like to everyone else.

Fiona doesn’t need to know what it looked like when Rhys had offered her a hand up and she’d scrambled away, either. She thinks about that far too often, anyway, to wonder what Sasha thought and what Vaughn must have assumed. Whatever it is, Fiona’s already come up with something worse, and the hell of it is that she hasn’t come up with a wrong answer yet. Fiona had been scared, and hurt, and still shaken from watching Sasha disappear into the slipstream, and she had been determined — more than anything else — to never put either of them in a situation where she’ll have to do that ever again. Maybe it isn’t her choice to make, but Fiona never wants to hear Sasha tell her that it’ll be all right, not like that. Fiona never wants to have to watch Sasha slip away, braver than Fiona will ever be, if she has anything to say about it.

For months afterwards, Fiona had woken up wet-faced and red-eyed. She’ll do anything to avoid ever feeling like that — helpless when it had really mattered — again, even if it means pushing everyone away and gritting her teeth and turning to stone one day a time.

Maybe that’s what bravery means, for her. Maybe Fiona has the sort of bravery that means getting up every morning to face the same hard day, over and over, not for glory or riches but for the right to continue on as she does, living well in her own way and never risking anything.

Not everyone gets to be a hero.

It’s not as if Sasha needs Fiona to be some sort of legend, anyway; she’s making a name for herself, even if that mostly relies on pulling strings and knowing the right people for the job. Sasha’s never needed Fiona to stand up for her, not really. She can more than handle herself and her business, and Fiona’s proud of her for it. She just wishes that Sasha didn’t have to, but then they don’t live in that kind of world, and it isn’t that kind of story.

Nobody’s likely to think of Sasha as Fiona’s kid sister anymore, either; if anything, Fiona’s the loose cannon and the liability. She doesn’t hate it, because Fiona’s spent her whole life being the responsible one, but sometimes she feels as if she’s the only one who doesn’t have it all figured out. Rhys is running a corporation, the way he’s always wanted, and Vaughn is apparently reinventing the radioactive agricultural wheel, and Sasha is probably controlling at least half of the illegal activity on Pandora by now, though the less Fiona knows about that the happier she’ll be.

Fiona can’t even figure out what she wants, let alone how to get it, and that’s fine — lots of people have no idea what they’re doing, and most of them are worse at it than she is — but sometimes Fiona feels like she’s getting too old to be one of them. Vallory had called her Felix’s favorite, and had laughed about how she’d been keeping an eye on them, and Fiona hasn’t done any of the things that everyone seems to expect from her. She hasn’t found another Vault, or gotten off of Pandora, or even come up with a plan.

Looking at Sasha at the end of the table, it’s hard for Fiona to feel like anything but a disappointment. It isn’t Sasha’s fault, and it isn’t Felix’s, and it isn’t anybody’s problem but her own, but Fiona has a hard time getting over it, is all. Sasha might still be learning, but she’s queenpin material, through and through, and Fiona’s still running the same cons that she taught Sasha when they were both teenagers. Maybe she’s the one who isn’t growing up, trying to smile for both of them: maybe Fiona’s showing off and spinning her wheels and going nowhere when, really, that isn’t what Sasha needs, and isn’t what she had ever needed to begin with.

That doesn’t matter. Fiona’s figuring it out in her own time, and this is as good a start as any. She’s finding her feet. She’ll be fine.

If Fiona says it often enough, she might start to believe it, and then it might actually be true. She’s working on it.

Sasha’s story doesn’t start with the Traveler, anyway, but a little bit afterwards, before she’d started asking the difficult questions and after she’d started picking up where Vallory had left off. Fiona doesn’t sigh with relief, but it’s a near thing.

“So this starts when you two decided to be massive idiots and screw me over for the rest of eternity,” Sasha says, looking right from Rhys to Fiona. “Not to be pushy, but if you could get your shit together, that would be great. For me, but also for business.” She grins. “I mean, it really started when the Eridians settled this rock, but that just doesn’t sound as good. Open the story with a bang, you know?”

“I like my version better,” Rhys says.

“Me too,” Fiona says. “I get way more snappy comebacks, for a start.”

“Look at that!” Sasha says. “You’re working it out already.”

Fiona and Rhys both glare at her. Vaughn looks as if he would rather be loaded into a moonshot cannon, and August yawns ostentatiously. “Get on with it,” he says.

“Wow,” Sasha says. “Right. Let’s do this the boring way. How much do you know about eridium?”

“Purple,” August says. “Glowy. Toxic. Expensive.”

Sasha gives Fiona a familiar look, one which means that she doesn’t know why she’s even surprised. “Okay,” Sasha says, as if she’s mentally recalibrating for an even longer conversation than she’d originally thought. “You know how I said we were starting from the beginning? Let’s start a little before that.”

Fiona snorts — she can’t help it — and Rhys glances at her and then away. “Sure,” Fiona says, looking at Sasha sidelong. “Keep it simple for the amateurs.” Fiona could swear that Rhys is smiling, but when she looks at him out of the corner of his eye, he’s all business.

“Simple,” Sasha says. “Right. So we’ll start with radioactive decay.”

August groans.

 

* * *

 

If Fiona’s being honest, she understands about half of what Sasha says, but that probably goes for everyone at the table; probably Rhys and Vaughn could muddle through on their own, if it came down to that, but she and August probably have about three quarters of it at most, and that’s put together. Radioactive decay Fiona can handle just fine. On Pandora it’s kind of hard to avoid, honestly. August starts looking a little glassy-eyed when Sasha mentions the acceleration of some sort of chain reaction, which Fiona guesses is the direct opposite of how anybody should react to those words in that particular order, especially when preceded by “planetary”.

“Hey!” Sasha says, about an hour into her explanation. “You have maps everywhere. This is perfect. Which ones can I draw on?” She gets up. “Are these crop rotations?”

“Yeah!” Vaughn says. “Nicely spotted. Hang on, I think we have some duplicates by the moonshot.”

“Long time no see,” Sasha says, patting the console, as Vaughn rummages around under the seats.

“Wake me up when they’re done,” August says, and puts his head down on his arms. Fiona leans across the table and pokes the side of his head until he grumbles and props himself up on one elbow. “What?”

“Aren’t you interested?” Fiona says. “I mean, this is what we’re here for, right?”

“You just don’t want me to fall asleep and leave you with him,” August says, and Fiona doesn’t have to ask who he means.

“No!” Fiona says. “I can handle this just fine. I just don’t want you to miss anything.”

“Sure,” August says. “You tell yourself that.”

“Come on,” Fiona says. “Help me out here.”

“Why do I ever listen to you,” August says into his elbow. He makes an effort to look slightly less apathetic. It doesn’t really work, but at least he tries.

“You know I can hear all of this, right?” Rhys says. “This table isn’t that long.”

Fiona considers, for less than a second, ignoring Rhys and pretending that he isn’t there. She doesn’t even make it to the end of the sentence, mentally, before Fiona’s listening to her own voice, horrified, as she says: “Is it just me, or does this all sound way too familiar?”

“Uh,” Rhys says, looking genuinely nonplussed. “Okay. Let’s do that again. I say _this table isn’t that long_ , you say _no kidding, I can still see you from here_ or something so that you don’t lie awake kicking yourself about missing a chance to add insult to injury.” He pauses, as if he’s just remembered that they can’t stand each other. “That’s your style, right?”

“Are you trying to be nice?” Fiona says, equally confused. “I can’t tell. I think that was you trying to be nice, but in case you didn’t notice, it didn’t work. Here’s a tip: don’t tack an insult onto the end. It sort of ruins the whole thing.”

“Being around you does that just fine,” Rhys says.

“There you go,” Fiona says. “Feel better now?”

Rhys snorts. “I should be asking you that.”

“Thank god,” August says. “I thought you were actually gonna get along for a minute there.” He waves. “Remember me? Still here? No? Right.”

They both look at August for a second, and then back at each other. “Did you hear something?” Fiona says.

“I think it was the wind,” Rhys says.

“Aw, come on!” August says, but Fiona doesn’t look at him, and after a second he puts his head back down on his arms and goes sulkily quiet. When she looks back up, Rhys is definitely vaguely smug, which doesn’t mean that Fiona wants to punch him, but as expressions go it’s infinitely preferable to wounded fury.

“Yeah,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. “Definitely familiar.” Rhys pauses. “If I say that I kind of missed this, can we pretend that neither of us heard that, either?”

“I’m the only person at this table,” Fiona says. “I can’t hear a thing.”

“Yep,” Rhys says. “That hasn’t changed.”

Vaughn comes back, arms full of rolled-up maps, and Fiona sacrifices an arm’s worth of mobility to hold down the corner of the biggest one with her elbow. “Right!” Sasha says. “So. There are a few sites on Pandora where you get natural seismic activity, right?” She points. “Here, though a lot of that is probably because someone dropped a space station on it.”

“Hey!” Rhys says. “It was one time.”

“I know the feeling,” Fiona says.

“Here,” Sasha says, pointing again, “and here.” She straightens up. “Notice anything?”

“Everyone who goes there dies?” August offers.

“It coincides with Vault activity,” Vaughn says.

“Right,” Sasha says. “Except that it’s been spreading, recently, which would be bad — or worse, I guess — if it didn’t follow veins of eridium.” She traces a line with her finger, and stops.

“Huh,” Fiona says. “I mean, that makes sense, right? If the Traveler doesn’t stay on any one planet, and we sort of—” She gestures. “—Kept it here? Sounds like that would do it.”

“See?” Sasha says. “Exactly. That’s why I asked you in the first place.”

Fiona frowns. “Okay,” she says, “but what does this have to do with a Sleeper? Was that even real?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sasha says. “I mean, that’s why waking the Sleeper is meant to be important. Something to do with eridium decay and refinement — we can’t see it yet, it’s still too deep underground, but — that’s probably why we’re getting these shifts.”

“Settlements disappearing,” Vaughn says. “Fault lines, that kind of thing?”

“Forget settlements,” Rhys says. “I heard an entire mountain range went missing.”

“No pressure,” Fiona says, and everyone looks at her. “What? I’m kidding! Hey, pressure. Get it? Like — no? — okay.”

“I’m just going to pretend that didn’t happen either,” August says. “Start a tab.”

Vaughn looks at him. “I don’t get it,” he says, “and I’m not going to ask.” He turns to Sasha. “So what do you want us to do about it?”

“Well,” Sasha says, “it’s Traveler stuff, right? Sorry,” she says to Fiona, “but we’re the only people on the planet who were there. We’ve got the best shot at figuring this out.”

Fiona pushes herself back from the table so quickly that her chair falls over. “No way,” she says, “absolutely not,” and only then does she notice that Rhys has done exactly the same thing. “You didn’t tell him either, did you?”

Sasha looks slightly uncomfortable. “Neither of you asked.” She squares her shoulders. “I don’t know. End-of-the-world shit seemed a little bit more important than the details.” Sasha looks at the map. “Some of these veins of eridium go pretty deep.”

That’s Sasha, Fiona thinks. Always thinking ahead, always focused on the bigger picture, and here she and Rhys are, too caught up in the details to notice that Sasha’s been leading them here from the first. It’s why Sasha’s the queenpin and Fiona’s still a small-time con.

She’s still angry, but that isn’t going to help.

“Wait,” Rhys says, and Fiona puts her anger and her hurt aside for later. “End of the world? Nobody said anything about that.”

“I mean, it’s what seems to be holding the planet together,” Sasha says. “And it’s pretty safe to assume that nothing on Pandora cares if we make it, right?”

“Okay,” Fiona says, “but what do you want us to do about it? Why not just bail?” _You’ve always wanted to see the galaxy_ , she doesn’t say. _Why not take off and never look back?_

“It isn’t so bad when you get used to it,” Sasha says. “I guess some of the people are okay.” She winks, and then gets serious. “And I don’t think this is just about Pandora,” Sasha adds. “I think this is about you two.”

 _Fool_ , Fiona thinks, and: _the rest is up to you_. She doesn’t even have it in her to be surprised and, when she meets his eyes, neither does Rhys, as far as Fiona can tell.

“Oh, no way,” August says, looking from Fiona to Rhys and back again. “I’m out.”

“Do we even know what we’re up against?” Fiona says. “Massive rock alien? Megalomaniac ghost in the machine?” She considers. “Tentacle eyeball with teeth?”

“No idea,” Sasha says airily.

“Great,” Rhys says. “Let me just go and, I don’t know, process this? God,” he says, and throws his hands up. “Why does this keep happening to me! Go to Pandora, they said. Seek your fortune.” He laughs bitterly. “They didn’t mention getting stuck with _you_.” He stalks out of the room.

“He means me, doesn’t he,” Fiona says.

“No way,” August says, and she looks at him, surprised. “He’s definitely talking about me.”

Nobody says anything for a minute.

“August?” Fiona says.

“Just trying to lighten the mood,” August says, which just shows how far downhill things have gone.

“Thanks,” Fiona says, “but don’t.”

“I’m going to get some air,” Vaughn says. “Let’s go see about food, huh?” He stares at August.

“Uh, yeah,” August says, trying for subtlety and missing by a mile, and follows Vaughn to the door. “Food! Sounds good.”

Fiona would laugh if it wasn’t so mortifying.

“Fiona,” Sasha says, and she sounds sorry, and that’s worst of all.

“Don’t,” Fiona says, arms crossed tight across her chest as if that’ll keep her together. “Don’t, Sash,” and they stand together in silence until the sun dips behind the mountains.

Even filtered through the ruined sky, it’s beautiful.

“Okay,” Fiona says eventually, when the light is nearly gone. “Okay,” she says, again, and turns to Sasha. Shoulders back, chin up, back straight, and Fiona might be able to talk without bleeding out if she tries. “What do we have to do?”

 

* * *

 

They end up missing dinner, though August brings them food, and doesn’t seem entirely sure why; he sets the plates down by Sasha’s elbow, and then stands there as if he’s waiting for something but doesn’t know what. “Sasha,” Fiona says, after a minute, because if nobody does anything she’s going to collapse into hysterics and she honestly might never recover.

“Oh,” Sasha says, and looks up. “Thanks, August.”

“No problem,” August says, sounding just as confused as he looks.

“Can I, uh, help you?” Fiona says, only vaguely on the verge of howling with laughter, which is still better than she expected.

August shakes his head, still vaguely lost. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?” he says, and Fiona barely manages to last until the door closes behind him before she snorts so hard that she feels like she’s dislocated a sinus.

“Oh my god,” she says to Sasha. “You have to do something, seriously, this is getting kind of sad.”

“About what?” Sasha says, and looks up from the map again. “Oh, August. That’s history, isn’t it?”

“No!” Fiona shrieks. “Do me a favor, okay? Tell him to heel and see if he falls over himself to do it.” She covers her mouth with both hands and screams with laughter. “I’m just saying. If you let him, he’d probably sleep at the end of your bed. Oh thank god. If I had to keep that in my head for one more second I was going to explode.” Fiona laughs until she feels vaguely ill, and then puts her head in her hands and laughs some more.

“Okay,” Sasha says, amused. “First of all, you definitely need more sleep than you’re getting. Second of all, no way. I don’t need some kind of, I don’t know, devotee.” She presses at her temple. “If anything, I could use a second-in-command, but I won’t insult you by asking.”

“I’d be a terrible enforcer,” Fiona says. “I mean, my main talent consists of making bad jokes until people get sick of pretending to laugh and give me what I want.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Sasha says. “They’re terrible jokes.”

“Exactly!” Fiona says, and wipes at her eyes. “Oh, wow. I needed that.”

“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” Sasha says, and Fiona smiles helplessly.

“Me too,” she says. “Hey, not to kill the moment or whatever, but are you sure this is about the Traveler? It couldn’t be some weird Pandora seasonal thing, or maybe something to do with the orbital period?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Sasha says, not missing a beat. “We aren’t due for it for another, what, two years? And it’s not like this has happened before. I’m pretty sure I’d remember.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says. “It was worth a shot. And it definitely isn’t because Helios is gone, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Sasha says. “I mean, I’m not an expert, but I don’t think Helios was big enough to exert that kind of pull.” She props her chin on her hands. “I don’t think we’re that lucky.”

“Me neither,” Fiona says, “but hey. Hope never hurt anyone.”

“I mean, that isn’t strictly true,” Sasha says, “but it’s all we’ve got, so. Yeah. May as well, right?” She sighs.

“Wait,” Fiona says. “The eridium decay — that’s part of waking the Sleeper, right? It’s meant to be one of the signs or whatever — but it isn’t the main event.” She frowns at the map. “I mean, I’m just guessing here, but waking the Sleeper doesn’t sound like something that levels a couple of mountains and calls it quits.”

“Nope,” Sasha says. “I mean, you know about as much as me, but I’m pretty sure it’s worse than that.”

“Right,” Fiona says. “So if that’s basically the same as turning over in bed, then—” She tilts her head at Sasha. “—What’s the Sleeper?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha says. “Honestly? I have no idea. It might be some kind of Vault monster, or it might be a computer intelligence, or it might be something that we don’t even have the words to describe.” She looks tired, but there’s a light in Sasha’s eyes that Fiona recognizes. She’s seen it in the mirror. It’s the same feeling that Fiona gets right before she sets the hook, shakes hands on a deal or asks a mark if they’re in or not: she’s stepping out into open space, taking a leap of faith and trusting the story to catch her, and never knowing when she’ll fall. “Hell,” Sasha says. “It might just be a person. I just don’t know.”

“At least people are easy to deal with,” Fiona says, and Sasha nods. “Hey, tell August to do it. I bet he’ll ask for permission first.”

Sasha, to her credit, completely ignores Fiona. “We just need more answers,” she says, though Fiona doesn’t miss the way that she looks speculative for just a second. “We need someone who’s been in the game for a while, and who won’t throw us out the second we walk in the door.”

“What about a Vault hunter?” Fiona says.

“Sounds great,” Sasha says. “You got one in your jacket pocket?”

“I wish,” Fiona says, but the turn of phrase reminds her of a familiar horrified expression. “Hey. What about Athena?”

“Athena?” Sasha says. “Isn’t she retired?”

“I heard she spent her honeymoon getting thrown off every planet bigger than Elpis in the Eden system,” Fiona says. “Anyway, we’re just asking questions. I probably owe her a drink.” She considers that for a moment. “Or eighty.”

“If you think it’ll work,” Sasha says.

“It’ll be fine!” Fiona says. “I’ll ask August tomorrow, see if he knows where to start looking.”

“Tomorrow sounds good,” Sasha says, and yawns into her shoulder. “God. What time is it?”

“If I think about it, I’m going to fall asleep on the table,” Fiona says, and yawns herself. “Call it a night?”

“About time,” Sasha says, and gets up. “Don’t let the spiderants bite.”

“Don’t spiderants bite the, uh, yourself,” Fiona says. “Wow. I really need to sleep.”

“No kidding,” Sasha says, and pauses on the landing. “Hey,” she says, and Fiona turns. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Fiona says, and she might be tired down to her bones, but it’s easy to remember why she’s made the choices that she has, picked this life over one that she might actually enjoy. Sasha’s her sister. When it comes right down to it, Fiona’s never had to think twice about what she values most.

Fiona makes it to her room and trips over herself getting her boots off, and leaves her clothes on the floor, and barely manages to pull the blanket back before she goes face-first into the mattress, and then — small mercies — she falls asleep the minute that her head hits the pillow.

 

* * *

 

This time, when Fiona realizes that she’s dreaming, she has no idea where she is.

She has a general picture — it’s some sort of massive control room, all consoles and screens and columns — but beyond that, Fiona’s never been here, and it’s silent in a way that is impossible. It isn’t the silence of space, with its faint background hum of static, or even the echoing hollowness of caves that are so big that it’s impossible to see from one end to the other. Even the desert is louder than this, at night; Fiona can’t even hear her own pulse.

It’s quiet, Fiona realizes, the way that it gets when she has a choice, and everything slows down so that she can think, the silence between one heartbeat and the next drawing out like stolen time. She takes a step forward, and her boots don’t make any noise on the floor, and she takes another, and Fiona realizes that she isn’t the only person here. There are shadows on the other side of the room, gathered around something, and the screens are all greyed out with static, and as she rounds the core Fiona notices a single point of light, hanging in the middle of the group like a suspended star.

Without needing to think about it, Fiona knows simultaneously that this is, somehow, important, and that there is nothing she can do to change it. The point of light inches forward incrementally, and Fiona’s pulse thuds in her ears, and she realizes: it isn’t a star.

It’s a bullet.

Fiona doesn’t know why she tries to run, at that point, but she knows that she has to do something — has to try, anyway — and she makes headway for a minute before the dream catches her mid-step. The air is viscous, like molten glass; Fiona struggles against it, one foot in front of the other, and she’s almost there, one hand outstretched, when time comes unstuck.

She stumbles, landing hard on one knee, and looks up, and the air goes solid again, and the spark is gone, but the chamber isn’t dark. There’s a new glow, the rosiness of a sunset and the purple of an argon tube, and it isn’t a glow at all but a person, hand outstretched as Fiona’s had been.

There’s a trail where the bullet has been, a hairline fracture to mark its progress, and Fiona follows it back — through the vaguely personified nebula, where it doesn’t seem to have had any effect — and realizes that there’s someone else, falling forwards, even as the other leaps.

Two bodies, then, with one bullet: it’s neatly done. One of them isn’t falling, though, but continuing forward and coalescing, and only then does it occur to Fiona to wonder who had fired to begin with. She turns to look.

At the center of the room there is a shadow, and at the center of the shadow there are teeth, and Fiona knows that smile.

There’s a body at her feet. Fiona bends to get a better look—

 _Oh no you don’t_. _You get the hell away from her._

—Fiona doesn’t hear a voice so much as a shout, shaking everything in the room, rattling around inside her skull until she thinks that she’ll die of it. Fury, and grief, and something that scratches down Fiona’s spine and really, truly scares her: it’s possessive, this anger and sadness, spoken not in the language of sorrow but that of greed. It’s the sound of someone who’s never had to take no for an answer, and who’s used to getting what they want, and who’s never had something taken away from them before.

“Go fuck yourself,” Fiona spits. Being scared won’t do her any good, but getting angry might.

_Oh, I don’t know about that. My dream, kid. My rules._

Laughter, and Fiona doesn’t like the sound of that. If she could just reach her gun — get to her feet — or anything but this, down on one knee like she’s begging. Hell if she isn’t going to put up a fight.

_Now, where should we start, huh?_

Fiona can hear her pulse, drowning everything else out, and she inches to her feet, but it’s too slow. It’s too slow and she won’t make it, but it isn’t her pulse, it’s an engine, and a blessedly familiar one at that—

—and the walls come down, and Fiona stumbles forward and grabs at the railing of the caravan.

She looks around, but there’s no sign of the control room, no smiling shadows and no boneshaking voices and nothing but the endless horizon, dust and sun and the back of the caravan nothing but a battered wreck, bouncing along on two wheels.

“This is kind of cheating,” someone says, “but hey. Nobody said you had to face all your fears at the same time, right?”

“Vaughn?” Fiona says, and waits until she feels a little steadier on her feet to make her way up the steps to the driver’s seat.

“Who else,” Vaughn says.

“Thanks,” Fiona says, and leans on the dashboard. “I definitely wasn’t going to make it out of that one alone.”

“Sure you were,” Vaughn says. “Doesn’t mean you have to, though.” He shrugs. “It isn’t all about last stands and big gestures, you know?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says. “But still. Thanks.” She frowns at the compass embedded by the wheel. “Where are we going?”

“Well, you could probably do with some answers, right?” Vaughn says.

Fiona snorts. “No kidding. What was that, for a start?”

“No idea,” Vaughn says, “but I know someone who might be able to help.”

“Hey, anything that might help,” Fiona says. “It’s not like I’ve got any better ideas.”

“Fiona,” Vaughn says, and he turns to look at her, so sincere that Fiona can’t look away, even though she knows she doesn’t deserve it, and he smiles. “You have everything you need.”

“No I don’t,” Fiona says. “I don’t have anything.”

“You have this,” Vaughn says, and before he can tell her — before Fiona can figure out what he means — she wakes up, and it slips between her fingers like so much sand.

It’s still dark outside, but Fiona goes and sits in the map room and watches the sun come up. By the time that she can see light on the horizon, all that Fiona can remember of the dream is that she’s forgotten something, and that it’s important, and that — whatever it might be — she already has it. She already knows.

She just needs to figure it out.

 

* * *

 

They don’t actually have a particularly difficult time finding Athena, at least in general; she might be retired, but between herself and Springs, Athena seems to have a knack for finding trouble and kicking the stuffing out of it. It’s half a day’s drive, and they find somewhere to eat that favors quantity over quality and doesn’t ask questions and cram themselves into a side booth, and when Fiona finally gets sick of breadsticks — which takes a while — she digs her comm out of her pack and calls Athena.

“I’m busy,” Athena says, because of course she doesn’t care who it is.

“Is it awesome?” Fiona says. “I bet it’s awesome.”

Athena sighs, and there’s a crash. “No, it is not awesome. It’s work.”

“It’s awesome!” Springs says faintly in the background.

“Knew it,” Fiona says. “Want a hand?”

Athena snorts. “I’m handling it.” In the background, Springs whoops. “Sort of,” Athena amends. “Why are you calling?”

“Wanted to catch up,” Fiona says, grinning. “They say the Eden system still has a bounty out on your head.”

“The Eden system couldn’t find its own star if it tried,” Athena says. “Was that living or dead? I don’t remember.”

“No idea,” Fiona says. “Once the price has enough zeroes on the end, I think most people stop counting.”

“Hey,” Springs says, closer this time. “What if we pretend that I’m bringing you in and then split the take, huh? Bet that’d buy a whole lot of parts.”

There’s silence for a moment while Athena considers it, and then: “Wasn’t that price on your head too?” she says.

“Oh,” Springs says. “Probably. But hey! I can wear a disguise.” Glass shatters. “Is that Fiona? Hi, Fiona!”

“Hi,” Fiona says. “What’s up?”

“Not much!” Springs says. “Well, I mean, probably we’re about to get thrown out, but that’s old news.”

Athena sighs in exasperation. “Give me a second,” she says, and Fiona stares at her comm.

“Did she put me on hold?” she says, astonished, and August snorts. “Athena? Oh, come on!”

“Wait,” Rhys says. “Are you sure? I can still hear them. Unless it’s just me.”

Fiona listens. “Definitely not just you,” she says, “but that definitely isn’t me—” and then she realizes that it isn’t her comm, it’s the window at the end of the booth. Fiona barely has time to say “—oh, come _on_ ,” pulling her drink out of the way, before the window explodes inwards in a shower of glass and splinters and the table goes over. “You couldn’t just hang up?”

Athena picks herself out of the wreckage of the booth. “I told you to give me a second,” she says.

“Yeah,” Rhys says, picking splinters out of his hair. “Give her a minute, Fiona!”

“Really?” Fiona says. “You really want to give me an excuse to throw this at you?” She hefts her glass. “Because let me tell you, I probably don’t even need one at this point.” She looks around. Everyone in the room, down to the bartender, is staring at them. “Oh,” Fiona says. “I guess we should cash out.”

“I think it might be a little late for that,” Vaughn says.

Athena crosses her arms. “What are you looking at?” she says, glaring around.

The general consensus, as far as Fiona can tell, is that nobody is looking at anything, nobody has never looked at anything in their lives, and that they wouldn’t even know how to if they wanted. Athena heaves the table back upright and pulls up a chair.

“Where, uh,” August says. “Where’s Springs?”

“I think she’s having fun,” Athena says. “She’ll find us.”

“I hope she uses the door,” Rhys says, and Athena smiles. “You know, that really isn’t reassuring.”

“Good,” Athena says. She looks from face to face, and adds: “This is a terrible plan, whatever it is.”

“Hey!” Sasha says, and Athena reconsiders.

“Okay,” she amends. “Three-fifths of this is a terrible plan.”

“Hey!” they all say in unison, and Fiona watches as it slowly dawns on August that he probably isn’t one of the lucky two. Rhys puts his hand over his eyes.

“Can we please get on with it?” he says. “I’m pretty sure we’ve already outstayed our welcome.” He gestures at the former window.

“Sure,” Fiona says. “Go ahead, Rhys.”

“Wow. Really? You’re throwing me under the bus here? Fine,” Rhys says, and steals Fiona’s drink while she’s busy being smug. “It’s about some old myth. Eridian lore, that kind of thing, and eridium tech?”

“Say that again, but louder,” August says. “Probably there’s someone on the other side of town who didn’t hear you.”

Rhys glares. “You want to explain, be my guest.”

“We need to know about the Sleeper,” Sasha says, cutting in. “Everything that’s been going on lately — quakes, those upheavals in the Highlands, all the instability — we think it’s something to do with eridium, and the Traveler.”

The door opens. “Hey, babe,” Springs says, and snags a chair as she crosses the room, setting it down backwards and pressing a soot-smudged kiss to Athena’s cheek before she sits. “Hello, everyone! How’s tricks?”

“You’re, uh, kind of,” Vaughn says, and gestures helplessly. “Anyone? Help?”

“Your hair is smoking,” Fiona says to Springs.

“Wow,” Rhys says. “Subtle.”

“Huh,” Springs says, and shakes the soot from her hair. “Good?”

“No,” Athena says, and picks ash out of her headband. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” Janey says, and Athena smiles. It’s the sweetest thing that Fiona’s seen in a while, which is terrifying, but then this is Athena, so none of that is really a surprise. “Now what’s all this about?”

Rhys and Fiona look at each other, and then at Sasha. “End of the world,” they say in unison.

“Aw, not again,” Springs says. “Seriously? Don’t we get another decade or something first?”

“I wish,” Fiona says, and Rhys nods grimly. “You know how we thought that whole Traveler thing was over?” Springs nods. “Turns out we were wrong,” Fiona says, and reaches for her glass. “Hey!”

“That’s what happens when you pass the blame,” Rhys says, unrepentant.

“Children!” Springs says, and they both turn to her, affronted. “Always wanted to say that,” she says. “Look. Let me get a drink, and then we can go to my workshop, yeah? Figure this out without an audience.”

“Thank you!” Rhys says. “Finally, someone reasonable.”

“You owe me a drink,” Fiona says.

Rhys snorts. “In your dreams.”

“In _your_ dreams,” Fiona says.

“Right!” Springs says, and gets up. “This isn’t horrifically awkward at all. Distraction time!” She crosses her arms. “Who wants shots? Fair warning: if they aren’t on fire, they don’t count.”

“Me,” August says.

“Me,” Sasha says.

“Pass,” Vaughn says.

Fiona looks at Rhys. “I dare you,” she says.

“Ha!” Rhys says. “You’re on.” He grins. “And let me just say right now that you? Are so going to regret this.”

Fiona has a feeling that she really, really is.

 

* * *

 

The best that Fiona can say about the rest of the evening is that nobody actually gets set on literal fire, for the most part, though the brim of her hat is a little scorched by the time they leave the bar, and most of them are much the worst for wear.Athena seems fine, but Fiona’s pretty sure that Athena could take a truck to the face in silence and then get up and walk it off.

Walking down the street, Springs is a little unsteady on her feet, but nothing that isn’t manageable; August is slightly more aggressive than usual, but that could equally be the fact that he’s been forced to listen to their conversation for hours on end; Sasha turns to Fiona and says, voice perfectly steady: “I am going to find the person who invented cream moonshine and nobody will ever find the body.” It could be worse.

Rhys, on the other hand, is a lost cause, but then Fiona doesn’t know why she ever expected anything different. He has less than zero body mass, and that’s distributed over approximately a mile, vertically speaking, so it makes sense that he’s currently draped half over Fiona’s shoulder and half over August’s, doing his best to be constructive and not get dragged along.

“What,” Athena says, coming out of absolutely nowhere, “are you doing?”

Fiona definitely doesn’t almost drop Rhys. “What?” she says. “Who, me? About what? I have no idea! My best!”

Athena narrows her eyes at Fiona. “I can’t tell if that was an answer or not,” she says, “so I’m going to pretend that it was.” She waves August away and takes his place, which means that Rhys is slightly less unevenly distributed but definitely much closer to the ground, and gives Fiona a minute to try and rearrange her thoughts. “You mentioned eridium. Talk.”

“Wow,” Fiona says. “This is literally the worst time possible.” She glances at Athena’s face, and goes on hurriedly: “But that’s fine! Look, it’s kind of hard to explain, but.” Fiona shrugs as much as she can, given her Rhys-limited range of motion, and instantly regrets it. “Pandora’s full of it, right? And if something happens to that, who knows what that means. Nothing good.”

“It never is,” Athena says.

“Right,” Fiona says. That’s the problem with Pandora: it isn’t cruel; it just doesn’t care. Pandora was here before anyone settled on its surface, and it’ll be here long after they’re all gone. It’s a case of _when_ , not _if_. “Anyway, that’s what Sasha thinks is happening now, because eridium tends to show up around Vaults, and we summoned the Traveler.” Fiona stumbles, and catches herself. “Hell of a coincidence. We destabilized it or something, and now we have to figure out how to keep it from getting worse.”

Athena, to her credit, doesn’t have the same instinct for inconvenient questions that August does, or maybe she just knows the answers already. “So why do you need me?” Athena says, instead. “I’m not an expert on Vault history. I just find them and kill whatever’s inside.”

“You’ve been doing this for a while,” Fiona says. “Figured you might know someone who is. Plus,” she adds, “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t scared the shit out of me for a month solid back then.” Fiona grins. “Thanks. I kind of felt like I should say that.”

When Fiona looks over, Athena looks as if she’s started speaking a different language. “You’re welcome?” Athena says, as if she’s trying the words on for size and doesn’t know if she likes them just yet. “Look. I did my job.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, “but you didn’t have to be good at it, and you were.”

“Someone has to be,” Athena says. “Look. There are a lot of things that want to kill you out there, and I’ve survived most of them. No point letting that go to waste.” She looks at Fiona. “Ugh. Are you smiling at me? No. Stop. Don’t make it weird.”

“Nope,” Fiona says, and looks the other way. “Definitely not smiling.” It’s weird to think about the fact that one day she might be in the same position, and know something that’s worth passing on. She doesn’t exactly have the best track record so far, and it isn’t as if Fiona knows what she’s doing anyway. She gets the feeling that Sasha was always going to turn out alright, and Fiona’s never wanted to be any sort of example.

Fiona doesn't want to be like Felix, deciding what's best for other people without asking, but every day she thinks that she understands a little more. She might not like it, but Fiona’s good at reading people and understanding them, and she can’t hate him for it, as much as she tries. Even thinking about it that much makes Fiona want to run for the hills.

"It's never easy being the firstborn, is it?" Felix had said to her once, and he’d been right. It isn’t. It means that Fiona has to dream big, but not for herself. This isn’t about her, and what Felix had done hadn’t been about him, either.

Of course, Fiona thinks, that still doesn’t mean that it hadn’t hurt.

She’d learned from it, though. It hadn’t been easy, but at least she’d understood what he meant about trust, by the time it was all said and done. Sheltering someone is doing them as much of a disservice as never helping them at all, Fiona thinks, but she won’t do that if it means being like Felix.

If she’s given a choice, Fiona would much rather be like Athena.

“I know someone,” Athena says, and Fiona snaps out of it. “She might try to kill you, but she definitely knows about Vaults.” Athena grimaces. “And eridium.”

“Everyone I know has tried to kill me,” Fiona says. Ahead of them, Springs is holding the door open, and she tries to maneuver Rhys up the steps without breaking his knees. “Do we have a chance?”

“If she likes you, maybe,” Athena says. “But we aren’t exactly on the best terms, and it’ll be a long trip.”

“Wait,” Fiona says. “You’re coming?”

“She might just decide to shoot me first, and then you’ll be fine,” Athena says, expressionless. Fiona can’t tell if she’s serious or not.

“Is that a joke?” she asks, and hitches Rhys’ arm further up on her shoulder. “I can’t tell. I think you’re joking.”

“I don’t know what jokes are,” Athena says, deadpan, and dumps Rhys vaguely onto a workbench. Fiona barely drops him before he drags her down as well, and he mutters and turns over, falling entirely off the bench. Athena nudges him with her foot. “He’ll be fine.”

“I’m so glad you’re coming with us,” Fiona says.

“We need better transport,” Athena says, “and you need to get some sleep.” She jerks her head at the stairs. “Pick a spare room. We can start planning in the morning.”

“Wait,” Fiona says, but Athena is already at the next landing. “Athena!” Fiona scrambles into the dim stairwell after her, following the sound of footsteps. “Planning what? Where are we going?”

“You need to know about eridium,” Athena says, voice echoing faintly down the hallway. “We need to get you to Sanctuary.”

 

* * *

 

Fiona isn’t the last one downstairs the next morning, if only because she spends half an hour trying to replace all of her blood with coffee before Rhys stumbles in. “Wow,” she says. “You look awful.”

“Coffee,” Rhys says. “You’re saying words but I don’t know what they are.”

She pushes the pot across the table, followed by a mug, and it takes Rhys a moment, but eventually he seems to put the pieces together. Fiona decides to give him a hint, just in case. “Coffee in the mug,” she says, miming. “Mug in your face.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Rhys says, and pours coffee directly over his hand. “Fuck!”

“No,” Fiona lies, and Rhys glares at her over the edge of the mug. It would be more effective if he didn’t look like he’d been left out all night to be picked over by skags, though, and Fiona takes pity on him. “Look. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers.”

“That’s so nice of you,” Rhys says. “Oh my god. What happened?”

“Well,” Fiona says, “first, you challenged me to outdrink you — which, by the way, would have gone better if you’d kept track of who was sitting where — and then Springs bought another round of shots, and I think you mistook her for me, and she drank you under the _floor_. And then we brought you back here, and then Athena left you on the floor.” Fiona ticks them off on her fingers, one at a time, and runs out of hand. “And then I guess you dragged yourself somewhere quiet to die.”

“That actually explains a lot,” Rhys says. “Like why my knees feel like someone’s been kicking me for a week, and why my ribs are kind of flat. Do they look flat? Maybe it’s just me. Maybe all my internal organs have turned into pain.”

“Have some more coffee,” Fiona suggests. “In the mug this time.”

“I can’t tell if you hate me,” Rhys says, “or if you’re actually trying to keep me alive,” and then he seems to realize, and he chokes on his coffee, wide-eyed. “Wow. Let’s just pretend I never said that.”

“Near-death experiences aren’t good for you, are they?” Fiona says.

“Yeah, well, you’re not so great at them either,” Rhys says. “Are we really doing this? You couldn’t let me at least eat breakfast first?”

“We aren’t doing anything,” Fiona says. “You like like a corpse, and this is hilarious.”

“I knew it,” Rhys says, and slumps over, head on the table. “I knew you were enjoying yourself.”

Fiona considers the top of his head for a moment, and maybe she’s still drunk from the night before, but maybe it’ll help to be honest, just this one. Maybe it won’t blow up in her face. “Look,” Fiona says. “You’re the one who thinks getting stuck with me is the worst thing that can happen to anyone.” She looks down. “Not a lot of sense in arguing with that.”

“Sure,” Rhys snorts. “You thought I was going to be the next Handsome Jack.”

Fiona closes her eyes, because she can’t look Rhys in the face. Not if he’s going to remind her about that, and not if she doesn’t want to show her hand and spill her guts. “Yeah,” she says. “I did.”

“Yeah,” Rhys says, voice quiet. “Not a lot I can say about that, either.”

They sit like that for a minute, and Fiona thinks: of course he has nothing to say to her, not after that. It’s not like she wants to talk either, but if neither of them do anything she might scream. She might scream at the unfairness of it all, and she might punch the wall until her knuckles break, and then — worst of all — she might start crying with fury and frustration, at how she can’t even take back the things she wants to, and how she knows she should, but Fiona just isn’t that good a person. She’s just good enough to take care of herself and that’s it, and she knows that she didn’t have a choice, and none of it makes any difference.

“I mean, I guess I can’t blame you,” Rhys says, and Fiona looks up in surprise.

“What?” she says.

“I was sort of an asshole,” Rhys says. “I mean, I don’t know if you remember, but there used to be a space station up there? Sort of a big deal.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Fiona says, and only realizes how that must sound when she’s already said it. “For a start, you’re still an asshole.” She shrugs. “So am I. Hate to break it to you, but this is Pandora. Niceness won’t get you anywhere.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re terrible at giving compliments?” Rhys says. “Because wow. You’re really bad at it.”

“But you still know what I’m trying to say,” Fiona says. “See?” She still wants to scream, but not so urgently that she can’t look up to gauge his reaction. Rhys still looks like he’s trying to hide in his mug, but Fiona could swear that she can see the start of a smile on his face.

“Fine,” he says. “I guess it wasn’t so bad.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Fiona says. “Getting force-marched across the desert? That sucked, and the escape pod wasn’t exactly a great time either.” She looks into her own mug. “Some of it was pretty cool, though.”

“Aliens!” Rhys says. “Robots! I heard you kicked Vallory in the face! Look,” he says. “Maybe some of it was pretty shitty. I’m just saying.” He grins. “We were pretty awesome.”

“Speak for yourself,” Fiona says. “I’m even more awesome now.”

“You know, I keep wondering why my ankles feel like they’re full of sand,” Rhys says.

“You’re lucky I didn’t use them to drag you here,” Fiona says. “I just figured, hey! Probably he can’t afford any more head trauma.”

“Wow,” Rhys says. “I can’t believe how considerate that was. You know, I didn’t know whose fault my knees were until now, either.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fiona says. “Add it to my tab.” She considers him for a moment, and then admits: “I probably don’t hate you, but. You know.” She gestures, tracing the shape of an arch in the air. “You were there.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” Rhys says. “I’m guessing you had just as bad a time as I did, right?”

Fiona forces herself to think about it, though she would rather do anything else: the emptiness of space around her, and the way that she hadn’t been able to block it out even with her eyes closed, and the future going out around her like darkness closing in, and every path leading to the same ending. Fiona lives, and she dies, and it’s the only certainty she’s ever had, and she’s fine with that, but it isn’t about her, and the Vault hadn’t shown her that.

It had shown her Sasha — past, present, future — and every time, Fiona had let her down, and every time, Sasha had died, lonely and angry and preventable.

Every time, at the end of every path, Fiona had chosen herself and her own happiness, selfish to the very last, and every time she had lost everything else.

Every time — the only other constant — Rhys had been there.

It had made sense, then, for Fiona to run as far and fast as she could. Nobody understands Vaults, not quite, and Fiona still doesn’t know if there’s any way of knowing why she’d seen what she had — if it had been a certainty, or a possibility, or neither at all — but Fiona still knows, and always has, that she will do whatever it takes when it comes to making sure that Sasha is happy. If being around Rhys is what pulls Fiona’s worst nightmares through into reality, gives them bones and blood and sets them in motion, then she’ll keep running for as long as it takes.

If it’s a choice between Sasha’s happiness and her own, then Fiona doesn’t even have to think about it.

Fiona hadn’t asked then, and still hasn’t since, if Rhys had seen the same thing, but she knows that he had looked just as shaken, stumbling through the dust. Something occurs to her, though.

“Prosperity Junction,” she says, instead of answering his question. “Why were you looking for me? You said it was, you know,” and she sketches the Vault again. “That.”

“Oh,” Rhys says. “I wanted to ask if — no, never mind — it doesn’t matter.” He looks into his coffee, and Fiona knows that he’s about to lie. “Just wanted to see if you had any leads. It’s been a slow quarter.”

It isn’t even a good lie, but Fiona doesn’t have it in her to call Rhys on it.

“Long drive,” she says.

“Well, you weren’t picking up your comm,” Rhys says, obviously relieved that she’s bought it. “Didn’t you get my messages?”

“I sort of blocked you,” Fiona admits. “After the sixth one, they all started sounding the same. _Fiona, call me back! Fiona, this is important! Fiona, I can’t tie my shoelaces without you!_ That kind of thing.”

“Hey!” Rhys says. “I do not sound like that.”

“Sure do,” Fiona says. “I bet I can still find one or two of them.”

Rhys shoves the coffee back across the table at her. “Please,” he says. “Drink more coffee. Go back to insulting me. Better yet, just stop talking.”

“I win,” Fiona says, smug, and takes the coffee.

“Are we all getting along now?” Sasha says from the doorway.

“No,” Fiona and Rhys snap.

“Great,” says Sasha, “because starting tomorrow we’re all going to be stuck in a caravan again.”

“Absolutely not,” Rhys says. “No way. I want my own ride.” Fiona looks at him. “What?”

“Is it that new stinger?” Fiona says. “Because if you let me take it for a spin, I’ll distract Sasha while you make a break for it.”

“Deal,” Rhys says immediately, and is out of the room before his chair even hits the floor.

Fiona looks at Sasha. “What?” she says, and Sasha grins. “Oh, don’t you start.”

“Start what?” Sasha says, still grinning.

Fiona pushes past her, tipping her hat down over her eyes. “Just don’t!” she calls back, looking over her shoulder, and does her best to pretend that she isn’t hiding a smile of her own.

 

* * *

 

In the end, Sasha wakes up before either of them and claims the stingray as her own, which means that Fiona finds herself in the back of the caravan that Springs is lending them — not quite the same as the one they’d shared with Felix, but close enough — relearning just how fucked up her back is going to be for the next week and a half. She doesn’t actually manage to sleep, but Fiona manages to suffer in vaguely horizontal silence for a few semiconscious hours before she gives up and forces herself into an upright position.

“Does this thing a boost?” she asks. “And has Athena thrown August out of that technical yet?”

“Yes and no,” Rhys says. “I think he’s too busy sulking to talk. Or he might just be too busy staring at that.” Fiona looks over his shoulder. Sasha and the stinger are just a glint on the horizon, lost for the most part in the noonday heat haze.

“Wow,” Fiona says. “I can’t tell which one of them you’re talking about.”

Rhys looks at her. “I mean, this is August,” he says. “He probably doesn’t know either.” Fiona narrows her eyes and looks at Rhys sidelong. “Hey,” he says. “You asked!”

“I made a statement, which you then treated as a question and answered,” Fiona says. “Incorrectly.” She rolls her shoulders, experimentally, and her neck cracks. “Wow. Want me to take the wheel for a couple of hours? I’ll wake you up when I get tired.”

“I feel like I should be offended,” Rhys says, “but I think I’m still hungover from yesterday.”

“You definitely look like it,” Fiona says, and elbows him out of the way.

“That isn’t helping,” Rhys mutters, but he goes. Fiona takes a moment to watch him try and arrange his limbs so that he’s mostly on the bunk, which goes terribly, before turning back to the wheel just before he looks up.

The drive to Sanctuary isn’t particularly dangerous, as far as Fiona can tell, as long as they manage to avoid trouble heading across the desert. It’s just long, and not very interesting until they hit hill country right around Outwash. Eventually Sasha must get tired of scanning the horizon, because she waits for August to catch up and then circles first the technical and then the caravan, keeping pace for a moment to wave to Fiona before she’s off again. It’s good to see her having fun, Fiona thinks; she’d almost forgotten how carefree Sasha looks when she smiles.

Eventually, when the sun starts getting lower in the sky, Rhys gets up; Fiona can hear him clattering around, going through cabinets and drawers, and eventually he comes up to sit in the passenger seat. It’s an improvement over the last time Fiona was in one of these, since it means that she has options other than staring at the ceiling or staring at a wall when she isn’t driving, even if it comes at the cost of comfortable sleeping space. On the other hand, it means that she can’t ignore Rhys without being obnoxious about it. Fiona still wants, vaguely, to dive out a window whenever he’s around; she always feels like she’s giving too much away, being too honest and too obvious and too mess, and the previous day’s conversation over coffee hasn’t helped. “Sleep well?” she asks, instead, and hopes that Rhys will recognize it for the nicety that it is and let her drive in peace.

“As well as I ever do.” Rhys shrugs. “You didn’t exactly get a solid couple of hours before, either.”

“Yeah, well,” Fiona says. “You aren’t the only one who has trouble sleeping these days.”

“Guilty conscience?” Rhys says, and she snorts.

“Please,” Fiona says. “Not a chance. You know what I would have done if we’d gotten away with ten million dollars in cash?” She tips her hat down against the glare. “I would’ve gotten a nice hotel room, silk sheets and everything, and I would have spread all those nice crisp new bills on the bed, and I would have slept on them.” She grins. “Naked. It would have been the best night of sleep I’d ever gotten.”

Rhys doesn’t say anything for a second, and when Fiona looks over, he’s staring vaguely into the distance, and his mouth is slightly open. As she watches, he visibly pulls himself together. “Wow,” he says. “You really put a lot of thought into that, didn’t you?”

“So much,” Fiona says. “I know my type.” She shrugs. “What about you? Weight of your crimes?”

“What, my type?” Rhys says. “Oh, the whole not sleeping thing. No, it’s just—“ He hesitates. “—confusing? Like when you have stress dreams or whatever, when you’ve thought about something so much that you’re not sure whether you’re dreaming about it or if it’s actually happened. But worse.”

“Once I woke up and it took me an hour to remember if we’d lost our tail or not,” Fiona says. “This bounty hunter a day out of Earl’s, and we were just running scrap, but I’d been so worried about it that I almost didn’t remember that we’d managed to lose them when we left the Commons.” Rhys looks completely lost. “Point is, yeah. I know what you mean.”

“Right,” Rhys says. “I mean, they’re just dreams. It isn’t really worth complaining about. But still.” He looks out at the horizon, and the sunset simplifies the planes of his face, wipes away the shadows under his eyes and reflects from his implanted iris: gold, like solar shielding. “It’s just that — when I’m asleep — in my dreams, I’m never sure who — if — I’m never sure who I am,” Rhys says, quiet and honest and all the more heartbreaking for it. “If it’s me making the choices, or someone else. If I’d even be able to tell the difference.”

“Me neither,” Fiona says. “I mean, I know it’s me. That isn’t the problem. I just never know if I’m making the right choices.” She doesn’t add that she wonders about that when she’s very much awake, as well. It wouldn’t help. There she is again, being honest and messy. There’s no point making that worse that it already is. “Wake me up when you need a break, okay?” Fiona says. “I could use a nap.”

“Sure,” Rhys says. “Get some rest.”

He doesn’t look away from the sunset. Fiona wonders what he’s trying to prove.

 

* * *

 

The next few days pass slowly, the way they tend to when there’s only one type of scenery to look at in varying shades of boring, but when the sun goes down and it’s too dark to see much beyond their headlights they find a convenient pile of wreckage or dead tree to act as cover and stop for the night.

“I heard this story,” Sasha says, when they’ve built a fire on the second night, “about what happens to middle managers who don’t read the paperwork and jam computer chips straight into their brain.” She grins. “It’s one of those stories where everyone makes all the wrong choices and you’re like, hey! Don’t do that! Don’t go into the basement! And then they do it anyway and it’s like, never mind. You were definitely too stupid to live.”

“Wow,” Rhys says. “Subtle.”

“You know, I don’t think I’ve heard that one,” Fiona says. “You should tell it again. With the faces! Make the faces. I love the faces. Especially the part with the skin pizza.” She grimaces in exaggerated disgust. “Pepperonis! Ugh! Bleugh!”

“It was his face!” Rhys says. “His literal, peeled-off, goopy, oh god. Why did I think about that.” He covers his face, and then looks at the sky. “You weren’t there. It was all — no, oh my god! I’m not thinking about this — tacky and. Wow. No. I’m not thinking about this anymore.” He leans back on his elbows. “Deep breaths. Fresh air.”

“I have a story,” August says, and Rhys sits back up.

“Please,” he says. “Anything but this.”

August looks at him. “Nah,” he says. “I’m not telling it anymore.” Fiona snorts. “Let’s talk about tonsil kebabs instead.”

Fiona can’t quite tell by firelight, but she’s pretty sure that Rhys goes white, then green, then paler green. “Hey, Athena,” she says, because she isn’t sure what comes after that, but she’s pretty sure that they don’t want to find out. “You must have some great stories. What’s your favorite?”

Athena looks into the fire. “Once,” she says, “I went to Elpis and killed every kraggon this side of Concordia.” She smiles, and falls silent.

Everyone sits for a moment, and then Fiona clears her throat. “Right,” she says. “Great story! Thanks, Athena.” She looks around. “Anyone else?”

On the fourth day, the caravan’s built-in comms system gets stuck, which means that Fiona and Rhys have to listen to every argument — no matter how trivial or horrifying — in range until they can figure out how to fix it. Forced to either stop or endure endless weather reports, they stop in the shade of an overhang and try to enlist help.

Athena takes one look at the wiring under the dashboard and walks away. Sasha sits, cross-legged, and pulls at connections until the system is not only receiving, but glitching at maximum volume. August gets excited, to a worrying degree, about the prospect of actively destroying the comms system for a little peace and quiet, and Fiona sends him off to shoot rakk nests out of trees instead.

Vaughn wanders up, hands over his ears, and says: “You know this is probably just a switch malfunction, right?”

“What?” Fiona yells, over the sound of a stranger berating another stranger for messing up a supply run. “I think you said something that’s going to piss me off, but I can’t tell!” She turns to Rhys. “Did you hear him?”

“Oh, for the love of—” Vaughn says, and leans down and pulls a wire out of its socket. The sudden silence is deafening. “—See?” he says. “Switch.”

“No way,” Rhys says. “This has to be more complicated than that.”

“Nope!” Vaughn says, and Sasha makes room for him as he starts plugging wires back in and resetting connections. “You’re overthinking it. Nine times out of ten, you just need to kick it a few times, clear the dust.”

“Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on?” Sasha whispers to Fiona, and Fiona splutters with laughter. Rhys is still protesting, but she gets the sense that it’s about his ego more than anything else at this point, so at least she gets some free entertainment out of it.

“I know comms systems!” Rhys says, affronted. “No way it’s just the switch.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, because she never misses a chance to escalate the situation. “No way. Switch. Right.”

Vaughn glares at Rhys. “Did you even read the — oh, for — never mind.” He turns to Fiona. “Did you even read—” He throws his hands up. “—oh, come on! Am I seriously the only person here who gives a crap about taking literally five seconds to read the instructions? Guys? Come on!” He turns to Sasha.

“You can pretend I’d read the instructions if it’ll make you feel better,” she offers.

“Thank you!” Vaughn says, and shakes his head. “Wow. Thanks. I feel so much better now. Almost as good as I would feel if anybody else knew what they were doing!”

“That’s why we have you,” Fiona says, and gives him her sweetest smile.

“Wow,” Rhys says. “Really? Cheap.”

“You’d know all about that,” Fiona says, and then there’s a scream in the distance.

“That’s probably August,” Sasha says.

“We should see if he’s okay, right?” Vaughn says. “I mean, I’m sure he’s fine, but we should go and see if we need to save something from him.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s okay,” Rhys says. “We should check, though. Just in case.”

They all look at each other and nod. Nobody moves. The comms system crackles back to life.

“I mean, I guess we don’t have an excuse now,” Vaughn says, and starts fitting panels back into place.

Fiona groans and gets up. “Fine,” she says. “But don’t blame me when he comes back over the horizon with an entire bandit camp at his heels.”

On the seventh day, Fiona finally gets moving early enough to lay stealthy claim to the stingray, hampered only slightly by the fact that, as soon as Rhys notices, he takes one look at the grin on her face and climbs on behind her.

“The only way I’m letting you drive,” he says, “is if I’m there to take the controls when you have a heart attack and die because of how awesome this is.”

Fiona can’t even come up with a response for a second. “Wow,” she says. “You really don’t believe in lowballing, do you?”

“Hey, I built it,” Rhys says. “Don’t undersell. And anyway, no. It really is that cool.” He kicks her in the ankle getting up to the gunner’s perch in the back, which is almost certainly deliberate; Fiona revs it up just to watch him go wide-eyed. “Whoa, okay,” he says. “Take it easy. No showing off, right? Just get used to it first.”

“Do I look to a show-off to you?” Fiona says, and doesn’t give Rhys a chance to answer before she all but stands on the boost and whoops.

Five minutes later, they have to go back to pick up her hat.

Because they haven’t run into trouble yet, of course, and because Fiona isn’t allowed to have nice things without suffering for it first, last, and in between, August spends the morning accumulating all the bandits he can find and then completely failing to get rid of them.

It takes Fiona a minute to realize, but in her defense most of what she’s been paying attention to for the past few hours has either been a speed blur or Rhys shouting instructions about an inch from the back of her head, and she’s been ignoring him anyway.

“Fiona,” he yells, “you might want to pay attention to this,” and then a buzz-axe nearly takes her head off, and Fiona swears.

“Gun!” she yells back over her shoulder. “Grenades in my bag. Tell me that turret’s good for something besides being a headrest.”

“Seriously?” Rhys says, but he swings the cannon around anyway. “Tell me you have a plan!”

“I have a plan!” Fiona says, and she sounds a lot more confident than she feels, but by then they’re surrounded anyway, and there isn’t much to do but make it up as she goes along.

 

* * *

 

Fiona doesn’t notice the buzzard for a couple of reasons. One of them is that she’s trying to protect the caravan; Sasha’s a good driver, and if the bandits manage to board then they’ll have to get through Athena, who doesn’t do well with getting left out of the action anyway, but it’s a big target and relatively unarmed. Another is that August is doing his best to think strategically, and is therefore approximately as likely to provide friendly fire as he is to actually cover them, not to mention the fact that this is his fault to begin with. On top of that, they’re boxed in by a canyon now, so it’s harder for Fiona to avoid him than she would like. Because Fiona’s life is still too easy, apparently, they’ve somehow also managed to interfere with some kind of scythid migration, which means that Fiona spends a lot of time swerving unpredictably and Rhys spends a lot of time screaming incoherently whenever anything hisses, which doesn’t help.

If she’s being honest, though, the biggest reason that Fiona doesn’t notice the machine gun fire overhead is that Rhys is more or less standing on her shoulders. As excuses go, she thinks, that’s as good as it gets.

The stingray’s comm buzzes, and Fiona glances over at the caravan. Sasha is staring. Fiona can’t blame her. “Fiona,” Sasha says, incredulous tone audible even through the static and gunfire, “what exactly is Rhys doing?”

“I think he’s improvising,” Fiona says. The turret is only vaguely still attached to its housing at this point, though she isn’t sure how much of that is actual damage and how much of that is the fact that Rhys had gotten frustrated with its limited range of motion and used his cybernetic arm to apply torsion until something gave.

“Huh,” Sasha says. “I think it’s actually working.”

“I know, right?” Fiona says, and swerves to avoid imminent wreckage. “Except the part where he’s basically _standing on my head_ , it’s going great!” she adds, voice rising to a shout.

“I can hear you just fine!” Rhys says. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the same boat here!”

“And except the part where he hasn’t bothered to look up,” Sasha says, and Fiona glances upwards as well.

“Fuck,” she says under her breath. “Any chance Athena could cover us from the roof?”

“On it,” Athena says, distantly, and Sasha gives Fiona a thumbs-up.

“I’ve got you, sis,” she says. “Just hang on a second, okay?”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” Fiona says. “I’m not unreasonably tall. I’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Sasha says. “Hey, should we tell him?”

“Rhys?” Fiona says, and spares him a glance. “Nah, let him have a minute. This is probably the coolest thing he’ll ever do.”

“I can’t tell if that was an insult or a compliment,” Sasha says. “I think it was both. Can’t he hear you?”

“Probably.” Fiona shrugs, and Sasha snorts. "What? I'm just saying, he's probably earned it at this point.”

”Wow," Sasha says. “Wow, Fiona.”

”Shut up," Fiona says. "Don't say a _word_.”

“Not going to,” Sasha says. “But. Wow.”

“Not a word!” Fiona says, and reaches into her pack. “Rhys, grenade,” she yells, and pulls the pin with her teeth. “Think fast!”

“Seriously?” Rhys says. “This is your idea of a trust fall?” He shifts all his weight to her shoulders for a second, and Fiona only manages a half-hearted toss, straight up in the air, but it’s enough. “Heads up,” Rhys bites out, and swings the turret to meet it.

As hits go, it’s a beauty. The grenade sails over August’s technical and lands in the turret housing of a rider, and Fiona loses sight of what happens next, but she hears the blast, and Rhys whoops. “Nice,” he says.

“Knew you’d think of something,” Fiona says.

“No you didn’t,” Rhys says

Before Fiona has to come up with a reply, a few things happen in a very short period of time. First, Athena pushes open the hatch of the caravan, and shouts a warning; second, Fiona realizes that the buzzard’s rotors are louder than ever; third, she doesn’t feel as if her collarbone is about to snap in half. By the time Fiona realizes what that means, Rhys is already in the air, held aloft by a bandit hanging out of the side of the buzzard.

“Stop fighting!” Athena yells. “You’re going to fall!”

“That’s kind of the point!” Rhys calls back. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m aiming for here!”

“What?” Athena shouts. “So that you can break both your legs and probably your skull as well?”

“I mean, no,” Rhys says, voice fainter now, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

“No!” Athena shouts. “No, it absolutely is not! What is wrong with you?”

“For a start,” Rhys yells, and then his voice is lost to the clatter of the rotors, and the rush of the wind, and then the simple fact of distance. The buzzard is too far away for Fiona to be able to see Rhys clearly, let alone make out his words.

“Fiona,” Sasha says over the comm, and Fiona stops trying to find the buzzard in the sky, looking back down, and swerves, barely avoiding an outcropping. “Hey! Fiona! Slow down.”

“Are we good?” Fiona says. “Did we lose them?”

“We lost them a while ago,” August says, and the technical skids to a stop, throwing up dust. Fiona brakes, coughing, and stumbles when she climbs out of the driver’s seat. “Just as well. Going full speed into that?” He nods at the end of the canyon, and Fiona notices for the first time the narrow crack in the rock, and the polar quality of the light on the other side. “Looks like a deathtrap.”

“That,” Athena says, climbing out of the caravan, “used to be a rat outpost.” She looks at it for a minute. “It should be clear, but you never know. If we want to get to Sanctuary while it’s still there, that’s the quickest way.”

“Great,” Fiona says. “Today just keeps getting better.” She rolls her shoulders back experimentally and winces. “No chance we could just, I don’t know, go around or something?”

“Not unless you want to pick Rhys up on the way back instead,” Sasha says. “Right? Isn’t there still some sort of camp in the maze?” She looks at Athena, who nods. “Sorry, Fi,” Sasha says, turning back to Fiona. “Looks like this is the only way.”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says. “Can’t we just leave him there? I mean, he drinks all the coffee, and he takes up way too much space for someone who’s mostly leg.” She looks around. “Just me? Anybody?”

“Cold,” August says. “I like it.”

“Practical,” Athena says, looking meditative, “but it might be a mistake in the long run.”

“Guys!” Fiona says. “I’m kidding!” She looks at Sasha. “Am I kidding?”

“You’re kidding,” Sasha says. “Probably. I mean, I don’t mind. It’s up to you.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, reluctantly. “I guess we have to go get Rhys back or whatever. What?” she adds. “Stop looking at me like that! It was a joke!”

“Sure it was,” August says.

“If you tell Rhys about this,” Fiona says. “I’ll tell him you were all ready to go along with it.”

“Wow,” August says. “You mean he might get pissed at me?”

“August,” Sasha says kindly, “stop talking.”

Miraculously, August does.

“Thank you,” Sasha says. “Right. So. Where do we start?”

“Here, for the night,” Athena says. “No point going in there when they’re expecting us.” She looks around, and points to an overhang in the canyon wall a little further on. “Set up camp there, go in before first light, and if we’re lucky we’ll make it to Outwash before they can put up any sort of fight.”

“Sounds good to me,” Fiona says.

“And I won’t say anything,” Sasha says. “Unless he asks.” Fiona glares at her. “Kidding!”

“You better be,” Fiona grumbles, and gets back on the stingray, and eats caravan dust all the way to the overhang.

 

* * *

 

That night, Fiona opts to sleep outside rather than spend another hour trying to fold herself onto the bunk in the caravan; she leaves it to Sasha and takes a bedroll and spends a profitable hour tossing rocks into the night until she has a reasonably comfortable patch of ground. Out here, the constellations aren’t that different, but their positions have shifted slightly, and Fiona stares up, remembering how it had felt to look down on Pandora from the very edge of the atmosphere, her entire life mapped out in an area that fit beneath her palm.

If she tries — lets her eyes go unfocused, and ignores the horizon at the edges of her vision, and thinks about the way there must be a depth to the sky for it to be at once so bright and so dark — then Fiona can imagine, perfectly well, what it would be like to simply let go and fall. Pandora isn’t that big, not compared to the system, and beyond that the galaxy, each a grain of sand compared to the next, and Fiona could float forever without ever making land.

She could go out, if she wanted, into the black, and look for a better world; one where she could live in peace, though Fiona isn’t sure what that even means anymore, and one where she could let the years pass, though Fiona doesn’t know what that would feel like, and one where she could simply be, undisturbed and at rest.

It would take a lifetime, but then it’s not as if Fiona has a better time. She could do it. She could look for as long as it would take.

Fiona is starting to get the feeling, though, that she can’t solve everything by running.

The sky is vast, and dark, and cold, and the stars are very far away. Fiona turns over and pulls the blanket over her face and does her best to think of nothing at all until she falls asleep.

When she opens her eyes Fiona thinks, for a moment, that she hasn’t gone to sleep at all. The stars are just as bright, though she can’t name any of the constellations, and the sky just as clear, and then Fiona notices the ribbons of light, translucent pink and purple and green, and understands. It’s a memory, or one in the service of yet another dream, and in front of her the great glass dome of the polar garden is cracked open like the skull of a giant.

She goes in, of course. What else is she supposed to do? This is a dream, and the only way forward is through, as inexorable as gravity. The only way out is down.

The first few steps that Fiona takes inside the dome are loud, ice crunching underfoot, but the rest is exactly as she remembers it: peaceful, the faint shifting of leaves and the vague sweetness of crushed foliage and the faint reflected moonglow light overhead. She doesn’t relax, precisely, but if this is her dream, then she knows the rules, and nothing bad can happen in a quiet place like this. Her memories have already done their worst.

When the door ahead of her opens, then, Fiona doesn’t go for her gun or look for cover. She waits, and when nobody comes out, she steps through.

“Ah, my friend,” Cassius says. “You are just in time!”

“Look,” Fiona says. “Just because you had your reasons doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about your cat.”

“The cat was real!” Cassius says. “It wasn’t a very good cat, but then, what cat is?” He gestures expansively. “With the claws, and the fur, and the complete lack of morality.”

“See, this!” Fiona says. “This is why I don’t trust you.”

“Oh, surely you’ve met cats before,” Cassius says. “You don’t have to agree with me, certainly, but at least you can understand.”

“Not because you don’t like cats,” Fiona says. “Because you can’t give a straight answer without talking around it in circles for hours first! Come on. There’s no way you aren’t doing it on purpose.”

“Ah,” Cassius says. “Well, that I cannot argue.” He turns. “If it’s answers you want, though, I can’t help you there. You’ll have to take your chances, just like everyone else.”

“Is this a trick?” Fiona says. “That feels like it was way too easy.”

“Clever,” Cassius says, “but not this time. I would not forget that, if I was you.” He leads her through the dome, up to the room where his maps still hang. “This is not a kind planet,” he says, pausing in the doorway. “It will take all that you love, and the ground from beneath your feet, and the hope that you keep in your heart for the worst days, and then it will grind you to dust. You cannot trust its gifts, and it will never make things easy for you.” Cassius crosses to his desk, and when he turns back to her, the maps on the wall begin to flutter, and there is a purple glow in the center of the room. “This is no trick. It is a game, just like everything else.”

“I don’t know the rules,” Fiona says.

“There are none!” Cassius says. “But you might just find what you are looking for, if you win.”

The entire room begins to glow then, and Fiona realizes: the light is coming from the floor. As she watches, it gets brighter and brighter, and then rises, and in the center of the glow is a Vault key in three pieces, spinning together and apart and together again.

It’s a game, is it, Fiona thinks. Alright, then: she can play games. She reaches for the card in her hat, but Cassius calls out. “Ah,” he says. “I see you have an ace. It would be a shame to waste so soon, would it not?”

“I don’t believe in playing fair,” Fiona says.

Cassius smiles. “Then you already know the rules!”

“Sure,” Fiona says, and takes the card between her thumb and forefinger anyway. “Bluff like hell,” she says, and tosses it at the key the way that Felix had taught her — a quick snap of the wrist, and Fiona lets the card slip between her fingers, and for a second she isn’t sure, just for a moment — and just before it disappears into the light, the room goes dark.

The card, when Fiona reaches up, is back in her hatband.

“Well played,” a familiar voice says, modulated through an unfamiliar voicebox. “It seems that an answer is in the cards for you.”

“Loaderbot?” Fiona says.

“Good name in man and loader,” the bot says, “is the immediate slave of thousands. I missed you too.”

Fiona looks around, but she still can’t see; she may as well have her eyes closed, for all the good it’s doing. “Me too,” she says. “Not to be rude, but where are we?”

“We are waiting,” the bot says, “to shed light on certain matters.”

“So that means I’m actually going to find out why I’m here, right?” Fiona says. “Get some answers?”

“Sadly, answers are running behind schedule,” the bot says, “and so is justice. There is traffic ahead of us, but we are in the queue and should be moving shortly.” For a moment, there is silence. “We are missing,” the bot says, “a piece. Your hand is not complete.”

“Okay,” Fiona says. “Cryptic? That I can deal with, but this is getting a little creepy.” She thinks she can see, now, just a little: a light in the distance, or maybe she’s just seeing things. “Can you give me a hint here?” she says. Fiona can definitely see light now, getting brighter by the minute, or perhaps closer. “What comes next?”

“What always comes next,” the bot says, and the light is blinding, and Fiona throws her arms up, and it shines straight through, as if she isn’t even there. “We die,” the bot says, and Fiona realizes: it’s a star. The sun is rising on Pandora, and she stares straight into it, unbearable light and heat and mass, and she reaches out to touch its surface, trails her fingers through the flare of its corona—

—and wakes up.

 

* * *

 

The sun won’t be up for a good few hours, so she doesn’t have to wake the others yet, but Fiona packs her bedroll and kicks sand over the remaining embers and finds a lookout, just in case the bandits have the same idea and plan to surprise them before dawn. She sits, and she watches the stars fade, and she watches the moon dwindle, and she thinks: not everything can be solved by running. Most, maybe, but Fiona’s done her fair share, ducking and weaving and staying under cover, and it only works for so long.

She doesn’t know how to do anything else, of course. That doesn’t help. The only way forward is through, but Fiona’s always been too smart to play by the rules; she’s always cheated, always found some way around, hedged her bets and taken the options that nobody else thought would work. She’s stolen and she’s lied and she’s still alive, at the end of the day, and still standing.

In the end, she hadn’t been the only one. Rhys had gone back to Atlas, the corporation he’d always wanted, and Fiona had gone back to the same life she’d always known. She had been so close — had found a way out, had gotten a glimpse of another possibility, had actually made it to that last big score — and she had seen what it would cost her, and Fiona hadn’t been willing to pay that particular price. She still isn’t, and she never will be, because some things she just can’t do and still be the same person, and Fiona hasn’t made it this far, smart-mouthed and stubborn-minded and still capable of smiling, to lose that.

Back when they’d been on the road before, with no idea what they were looking for or what any of it meant, Athena had stood with Fiona for a while, watching Sasha climb rock formations in search of occupied nests, in silence. Fiona wonders now if Athena had been thinking of her own sister, and wishes she couldn’t imagine it — even fractionally — and can anyway.

“What matters,” Athena had said then, eventually, “is that you keep going. Find something that gets you up in the morning, because if you stop, you’re done.” She hadn’t been looking at Fiona then, or at Sasha, but at the empty landscape and the distance ahead of them, and Fiona hadn’t been able to read Athena’s expression, and had been glad. “If you can’t walk, you do what it takes. You drag yourself by your fingernails. If you can’t do that, well.” Athena had paused, then, and she had smiled. “Make sure you aim for the kneecaps. That way they can’t run, and you can take more of them with you.”

Fiona isn’t much for kneecapping people, not if she can talk her way out instead, but she’ll do what it takes. Rhys had gone back to doing what he was best at, and so had Fiona, and in the end it hadn’t mattered either way. They hadn’t been able to run far enough, or maybe they just hadn’t been smart enough to figure it out: as long as they’re on Pandora, or maybe even as long as they’re in the same system, it won’t make a difference.

Maybe, if Fiona took the stingray — kept driving until she was just a speck on the horizon, and then further; bought a ticket off-world and kept going from there, system to system until she found some no-name planet at the edge of the galaxy, maybe then — that would be far enough. For a wild moment, she thinks about it, and Fiona can’t tell if the feeling that flares in her chest is hope or sadness.

It isn’t anger, because Fiona could find some way to use that.

She doesn’t do it, in the end, and doesn’t quite know why. Maybe it’s the thought of Sasha, waking up to find her gone, or maybe it’s the thought of never having a place to call home, even though she’s never had one before, or maybe it’s the thought of being forgotten. Fiona can’t help it, a small selfishness: even if it’s just her name, and even if it’s just stories that get more and more faded with every repetition, and even if memories fade, she doesn’t want to go quietly. She wants to leave a mark, something for Pandora to remember her by long after she’s gone.

Fiona’s dreams have always been too big for one person on a backwater war zone of a planet, anyway. She’ll stay. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, not when it comes to family.

She watches the last few stars until they’re gone against the brightening sky, flat blue, and Fiona thinks: this is it, then. This is what will keep her going.

When the horizon starts getting properly light, Fiona gets up and stretches, dusting herself off, and goes to wake the others. She can dream when they don’t have work to do — places to see — friends to rescue, she supposes.

It isn’t a comfortable word to use, even in her head, but Fiona supposes it’ll have to do until she comes up with something better.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Sasha says, as if she’s only just thought of it and hasn’t been trying to avoid the subject for the last hour. “Do we actually have a plan?”

It’s slow going, heading into the cavern, because there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver or retreat, so they’re playing it safe. Athena is on the stingray, going out ahead to clear out any stragglers, and August and Vaughn have presumably negotiated an uneasy peace, or at least have taken their mutual hostilities off the air, which is a relief, but it means that Fiona doesn’t have any convenient excuses and can’t avoid the question.

“I mean, I’m sure they’ll be glad to get rid of him by now, right?” she says, edging around a particularly tricky corner. “It’s been a whole twelve hours. I bet he’s been talking the whole time.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this,” Sasha says, and Fiona nearly runs them straight into the cavern wall.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says. “I have literally never thought about this before.”

“Right,” Sasha says. “Can you actually drive and think about this at the same time, or do you want me to take the wheel?”

“Don’t push it,” Fiona says, grinning. “Listening to you might just be the last straw.” She sits back a little, and blinks hard; the light isn’t great, so it’s dim going, and Fiona’s starting to feel as if she’s been staring at the same ice formations for the last year or so. “Why? Any suggestions?”

“For a start,” Sasha says, “you should probably figure out whether you want to punch him _before_ or _after_ you—”

“About the plan!” Fiona says. “Suggestions about the — oh my god — why would you do this,” she says. “The plan! That!”

“—or both, I guess,” Sasha says. “I mean, he seems like the type to—”

“I will find a cliff,” Fiona says, “and I will drive off it. Just to avoid having this conversation.”

“—be into that,” Sasha finishes, and Fiona wishes more than ever that she hadn’t taught Sasha to be quite so ruthless, but then she has nobody to blame for that but herself. “Nah. You’re probably right. They’ll probably thank us. Right?”

“I can’t tell if you’re still making fun of me or not,” Fiona says, “but I’m going to say yes anyway.” She looks at Sasha. “You’re still making fun of me, aren’t you.”

“No,” Sasha says, absolutely deadpan. “I have no idea why you’d think that.”

Ahead of them, Athena slows down, and holds up one hand; Fiona stops the caravan and waits, and Athena climbs off the stingray and takes a few steps forward to peer around the corner. Whatever she sees is enough to stop her dead for a few seconds, and then she retreats just as deliberately, still on foot, and her voice comes through on the comms a second later. “We need a plan,” she says, and Fiona and Sasha look at each other. “I’ve seen this before. Sometimes rats do this — take prisoners — instead of eating them.”

 _Eating them?_ Fiona mouths, and doesn’t need to check to see that her expression is probably the same as Sasha’s: a combination of incredulity and, somehow, a complete lack of surprise.

“It’s the cold,” Athena says. “Means you can keep them alive longer. Anyway, it means that they’ll want to trade.” She shrugs, leaning against the back of the stingray. “I don’t do well with negotiation.”

“I mean, what do we have to trade?” August says, and Vaughn snorts in the background. “I say let them keep him.”

“We could trade you,” Fiona says, more reflex than anything else. “I’m sure we could convince them that you’re better eating. Less stringy.” She glares at Sasha.

“What?” Sasha says. “I wasn’t going to say anything!”

“Sure you weren’t,” Fiona says. “No, look, fine. I’ll negotiate or whatever. It’ll be fine, right? This is my specialty.”

“Or whatever,” Athena says, voice flat. “We’re definitely shooting our way out, aren’t we.”

“Yep,” Sasha says.

“Hey!” Fiona says. “I can handle this!” She gets up. “You know me. I’ll wing it.”

The cavern, when she opens the door, is freezing; Fiona’s breath mists in front of her, and the ground is either completely frozen or simply solid ice, so Fiona doesn’t have to worry about footsteps, but she might end up flat on her face if she isn’t careful. “I’ll be right behind you,” Athena says, and Sasha nods as well and waves at August. He climbs out of the technical; after a second, Vaughn follows suit.

“Right,” Fiona says, and tries to look as if she knows what she’s doing. “Okay. This is fine.”

“Inspirational,” Sasha mutters, but by then they’ve rounded the corner, and it’s literally all Fiona can do to keep a straight face. August doesn’t even bother, from what she can hear, but then he yelps and goes silent, so Fiona assumes that Sasha has strategically applied her elbow to his ribs and saved them all.

Fiona doesn’t know exactly what it is — maybe some sort of souped-up rider, or maybe a stripped and gutted Cheta — beyond a deathtrap with wheels, but she does know that the rats apparently favor quantity over efficiency when it comes to restraints, because Rhys is taped to the front of it like the world’s angriest vanity plate, and it isn’t as if he’s any great escape artist to begin with, but they’ve been thorough.

“Wow,” Fiona says. “That’s going to _suck_ when we have to peel it off.” She looks closer. “Oh, yeah, seriously. Is that the heavy-duty stuff? Wow. Ouch.”

“Fiona,” Sasha says, under her breath, and Fiona remembers that she isn’t actually here to make fun of Rhys, as difficult as that is to avoid. She steps forward.

“Look,” she says. “You have something of ours.” Fiona waves a hand at Rhys. She’s always wanted to say that. “We’re here to trade.”

“It’s a morsel,” one of the rats says, voice hissing through a gas mask. “Ours now, sister.”

“Him?” Fiona says. “He’s barely a snack.” She shrugs. “Not worth the time it’ll take you to pick his bones. We can make you a better offer.”

The rat looks at her, head tilted, and points at August. “Him?”

Fiona turns to look at August. He’s doing his very best to stare her to death. She shrugs, but Sasha steps forward before Fiona has a chance to say anything. “Not on the table,” she says. “Sorry.”

Because Fiona is a good person, or at least one who can prioritize, she doesn’t do much more than narrow her eyes at Sasha in passing. “I keep telling her,” she says, turning back to the rat. “If it doesn’t have a collar, can you really blame people for thinking it’s a stray?” August, behind her, makes a noise of abject horror; Fiona just keeps going, because this is her show, and she plans to take as many of them down with her as she can before Sasha gets her in the ribs as well. The rat interrupts her, unfortunately, though it might be for the best in the long run.

“That,” the rat says, and points at the stingray. “We want that.”

“Oh,” Fiona says, because of all the things she’d expected — weaponry, money, food — it hadn’t occurred to her that they would go straight for the shiniest possibility. Rhys, behind the tape, sounds furious, and he narrows his eyes, but then Rhys was the one who went and got kidnapped in the first place, so maybe Fiona doesn’t care what he thinks. “You know what? Sure. Throw in safe passage, and you can have it. Atlas tech, not even on the market. Shiny as hell. It’s all yours.” The rat starts towards it. “No way,” Fiona says. “Cut him loose first, then we can trade.”

“Keeping the engine warm,” the rat says, and it takes Fiona a minute to understand: the cold might keep a fresh corpse edible longer, but it’s terrible for keeping an engine running. Rhys isn’t just on the front of the Cheta for convenience and her amusement. The residual heat of the previous day’s chase is probably the only reason that he isn’t dead yet, and the fact that Rhys isn’t dead is probably the only reason that the engine is still turning over.

It’s terrible logic, but then Fiona decides not to point that out.

“Sure,” she says. “Look, I don’t have all day.”

It takes them a while to get Rhys off the front of the truck, but then there really is an unreasonable amount of tape in the way, and Rhys isn’t particularly graceful about it. The rats don’t bother to unwrap him, either, simply cutting the tape holding him to the metal and watching in what Fiona can only assume is silent amusement.

When Rhys finally tries to stand, he manages a few steps and then goes down like a furious ton of bricks; Athena shows the rats her empty hands, and then drags him the rest of the way by his elbow. Fiona gets out of the way and lets the rats haul the stingray to the other side of the cavern.

Rhys, still doing his best to express his displeasure through a mouthful of tape, gets to his feet and Fiona notices for the first time how badly he’s shivering. “We’re going,” she says to the rats. “Safe passage, through to the Highlands.”

“So we said,” the rat says, and hisses. “Get gone.”

“Nice doing business with you,” Fiona says, and doesn’t stick around to see if the rats believe in keeping their end of the bargain. Athena and Sasha more or less drag Rhys into the caravan, and Fiona steps on the gas, and she doesn’t look back until she can see daylight around the corner.

“I can’t believe you gave away my prototype,” Rhys says, voice still shaky with the cold.

“That’s a prototype?” Fiona says. “I can’t believe you decided to test a prototype on a cross-planet road trip!” She pauses. “Actually, scratch that, I can’t believe you let yourself get kidnapped by rats!”

“Oh, excuse me!” Rhys says. “I guess you were too preoccupied to tell me about the buzzard, right? How long was that a thing?”

“Eh,” Fiona says, and shrugs, looking a little guiltily at Sasha in the passenger seat. “You looked like you were having fun.”

“And then I got kidnapped!” Rhys says. “And I learned way too much about how they were going to cook me, by the way! Do you know how many internal organs you can lose before you actually die?” He interrupts himself with a sneeze, which takes a lot of the sting out of it. “A lot. Way too many!”

“Hey,” Fiona says. “At least you got something out of it.”

“Oh, sure,” Rhys says. “This should be good. What? What did I get out of this, exactly? I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to burn these clothes, for a start, plus I’m afraid to rip this tape off because I’m pretty sure it’ll take my skin with it, because that’s what happens when you leave it on for more than ten hours!”

“I’m driving,” Athena says abruptly, and comes up the steps to loom at Fiona until she gives in. “You can deal with this.”

“What? No!” Fiona says. “I can’t believe you’re betraying me like this.” She gets up, though, and goes to sit on the opposite bunk. “Quit whining,” she says. “It’s way too easy to make fun of you like this.”

“You suck,” Rhys says, from where he’s doing his best to completely disappear into a pile of blankets, and peels another strip of tape from his side. “Ow.”

“Just rip it off,” Fiona advises, and grins. “What? Get it over with!”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” Rhys says, mournfully.

Fiona thinks about it. Rhys is a little less blue around the lips now, which is good, and they probably aren’t going back for his jacket, and what she can see of his collarbone is flushed an angry red, either from the force of his petulance or the aftereffects of even more tape removal; his hair is a disaster, and he looks endearingly pathetic at best, and when she crosses her arms and leans back, grinning, he flushes even more.

“Hell yes,” Fiona says. “This is _amazing_.”

“Great,” Rhys says, pulling the blankets up to his chin. “Just great.” He doesn’t sound that miserable about it, though, so Fiona doesn’t bother feeling bad. After a while, he says: “Tell me there’s a radio in this thing.”

There is.

 

* * *

 

It’s strange — they aren’t exactly friends, not yet, and no matter what Fiona’s said to get them out of one scrape after another, maybe they never have been — but things get better, after that. They still bicker, and it’s harder to avoid stepping on each other’s feet now that they’re down a vehicle, but Fiona spends an uncomfortable day getting jolted around the bed of the technical and Sasha takes a turn on the roof of the caravan, so it isn’t as bad as it might be otherwise.

They’re getting closer, too, which doesn’t hurt. They make Outwash a day later, and it’s green in a way which is new to Fiona: scrub grass and lichen and dry moss over rock, plants that can grow in hill country and survive the scouring wind and icy extremes. That night, they sleep by an empty Hyperion extraction plant overlooking a dam, and Fiona stays up long after the fire is out and looks across the water, down over the rise and fall of the valleys, all the way to the barely visible curve of the horizon.

If Fiona listens carefully, she can hear the echo of engines in the distance, too big to be anything but some sort of ship; it’s a low roar, easy to mistake for the rushing of water or wind, and the plant must have sounded like this when it was active. The sound thrums through Fiona, until she thinks she can feel it in her chest, and it might be that, or the cold, or the way that the air is getting thinner, but she sleeps well and wakes refreshed and goes in search of — who knows? A better view, maybe, or a glimpse of where they’re going — anything, it feels like, could happen. Fiona can see just far enough to be hopeful, from up here, and is still close enough to actually care.

Of course, she rounds the back of the caravan and runs directly into Rhys, because Fiona has the world at her feet and this is what she gets.

“Oh,” he says, “hey,” and she looks up at him — stupid, she thinks, stupid messy hair and borrowed shirt with the sleeve rolled up to show off his arm and the way he looks when he isn’t trying to be cool, surprised into substantive honesty, _stupid_ — and Fiona thinks: fuck it. Fuck the Vault, and fuck being scared, and fuck not being selfish. She’s sick of doing the right thing, not to mention: if they don’t have to be friends, then Fiona doesn’t have to worry about ruining this.

As reasoning goes, it isn’t the most solid she’s ever come up with, but Fiona isn’t exactly thinking about that when she grabs Rhys by his open collar and drags him down and kisses whatever he’s about to say — however Rhys is going to ruin this, because if she lets him then he will, Fiona’s certain of it — right out of his mouth.

“Wait,” Rhys says, and he doesn’t exactly make an effort, but eventually Fiona runs out of brazen overconfidence anyway, and he manages to catch his breath. “Is this a trick? Are you just looking for a reason to punch me?”

“Shut _up_ ,” Fiona says, “if I wanted a reason to punch you, I have a whole list in the back of my head. Got kidnapped. Ruined my life. Keeps ruining my life. Looks like that — who looks like that? I mean come on — asks stupid questions. I mean, I can keep going for days. Do you really want me to?”

“I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself,” Rhys says, probably to both of them, and Fiona glares. “I mean, you’re probably the worst thing that ever happened to me, on a scale of one to, wait, that would be you! The top of the scale! You win.”

“Wow,” Fiona says. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you.”

“You just told me to shut up,” Rhys says, and realizes just as Fiona does that her hands are still fisted in his shirt, and grins.

“If you say _make me_ , I’m throwing you in the reservoir,” Fiona says.

“Then don’t make me,” Rhys says, and she kisses him again, because Fiona really doesn’t want to inflict him on an important water source, but also because she wants to — shut him up, that is, learn how he sounds when she doesn’t let him catch his breath, learn how he laughs a little in surprise when she backs into the caravan — and because this is Rhys, and it doesn’t matter how much she threatens him. They both know what she means.

“I’m not going to break, you know,” Fiona says, and Rhys looks at her for a moment in confusion.

“Oh!” he says. “Right, no, sorry, I was kind of distracted.” He runs a hand through his hair, and she stares.

“Are you blushing?” Fiona asks. “Oh, wow. This is great,” she says, and he glares.

“Shut up,” Rhys says, and she grins.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “I won’t tell,” and curls her fingers into his hair so that she can watch him get even more flustered. He runs his hand up her side, tentative, and she can feel the slight chill of it even through the fabric. “That’s a start,” she says, and he traces along the curve of her hip with his thumb. “Cold, but better.”

Rhys pulls back. “Sorry,” he says, “I didn’t realize — hang on, I can just—”

“Oh come on,” Fiona says. “Seriously? You think that’s what’s going to weird me out about this?” She grabs his wrist and yanks it back down. “I swear to hell, you idiot, put up or shut up!” She can see the exact moment when Rhys runs out of patience, even messy-haired and pink-cheeked, and Fiona thinks: _I did that_. It’s an immensely satisfying thought.

“Could you stop insulting me for — just maybe — a whole minute?” he snaps. “Not helping!”

“Screw helping,” Fiona says, and yanks him down with her hand in his hair. “God, you’d think you could stop complaining for more than a second at a time, but no—” and she bites at his stupid tattoo until he jerks against her, fingers curling reflexively, and her breath catches in her throat. “— _Thank_ you,” Fiona manages. “Finally. Are you going to keep whining, or can we get on with it?”

“Do that again,” Rhys gasps, and Fiona grins.

“Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Oh my god!” Rhys says, pulling back to glare at her. “Your ego is out of control. Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Fiona says, and he glares even harder, but he’s flushed pink all the way down his throat now, so she doesn’t feel that bad about it, and it isn’t much of a glare to begin with.

“Do that again,” Rhys says, “please,” and she smirks. “And stop smirking!”

“I’m going to ignore that,” Fiona says, “because I’m nice like that,” and curls her hand around the back of his neck and drags him in for another kiss. Rhys gets her belt open, then, if only barely, gets his hand into her trousers, barely the right side of rough and just the way Fiona wants it, and she gasps against his jaw, rocking up against him.

“Now who’s not helping,” Rhys says into her shoulder.

“You!” Fiona says. “Definitely you, come _on_ , are you even trying?” She presses an open-mouthed kiss to the base of his neck, and drags her teeth up across his pulse, and he jerks against her and presses harder with the tips of his fingers, slick and smooth and sure. Fiona stops caring, then, about making fun of Rhys, and gets one leg up around his hips for leverage and a better angle. She grabs his wrist and holds him still and rocks against his hand until she’s gasping, so close that she must be shaking with it, and Rhys buries his face in her neck. “Fiona,” he says, “oh, fuck,” and she comes as if she’s been knocked breathless, biting down on his shoulder to keep quiet and riding it out.

“Fiona,” Rhys says again, looking up, and she covers his mouth with one hand.

“Don’t ruin it,” she says, and goes for his belt with the other. “Are you good at being quiet?”

He isn’t, but then he seems to enjoy having Fiona’s hand over his mouth anyway — if the way he goes wide-eyed and hot-cheeked and desperate is anything to go by — so that’s alright.

By the time they get cleaned up, or at least slightly less obvious — and it figures, that this is how it finally happens, on the side of the road and they didn’t even manage to get their clothes off first — everyone else is up, down by the plant, making enforced and excoriating small talk.

“Morning, Fiona,” Sasha says, and grins horribly.

"Is that a hickey?" August says, obviously beyond a point where he might bother even attempting tact, and nods at Rhys. “Don’t remember that being there yesterday.”

"What? No!" Rhys says, flustered and entirely ineffective. "It's a tattoo! Definitely a tattoo."

"In the shape of Fiona's teeth," Sasha says, still grinning.

“Hey,” Fiona says, but she’s pretty sure that she’s smiling. “Watch it.”

“We made breakfast,” Vaughn says, “but then August ate yours.” August shrugs, completely unapologetic.

“If we get moving,” Athena says, “we can make Sanctuary by tonight.”

“Oh thank god,” Rhys says. “Finally, someone who can be mature about this whole thing.”

“It’s definitely a hickey,” Athena adds, face carefully blank, and he glares at her.

“I take it back,” Rhys says. “I hate all of you.”

“You don’t hate Fiona!” Sasha says. “Aw, look at you,” she adds, turning to Fiona. “Check out that grin.”

Fiona definitely isn’t grinning. It’s probably the mountain air or something. She’s never smiled in her life, and she wouldn’t know how to if she wanted. She buries her face in her hands, and lets everyone take their fair shot, and doesn’t look up until she’s sure she can control her expression.

Every so often, though, Fiona catches Rhys smiling, just a little, so at least she isn’t the only one.

 

* * *

 

Fiona sits in the bed of the technical for a few hours, because it’s easier than trying to confine her unexpected effervescent happiness — and isn’t that strange, that she’s thinking in terms of happiness, and in terms of her own — and spends most of it trying to keep her ribcage from being jolted entirely to pieces. Mountain roads aren’t particularly well-maintained, and sometimes it’s easier to cut across the slopes, especially given a complete lack of regard for comfort and safety, but the view is more than worth it. Fiona watches the clouds, pulled thin and wispy by high wind, and watches the sky darken from washed-out paleness to a truer color, a vivid rich blue like deep water.

By the time they stop, a few hours later, Fiona has had the happiness thoroughly shaken from her system for the most part, having left Rhys to face the music alone. Judging by the look on his face, she’s definitely gotten the better end of the deal. Athena smiles at Rhys, surprisingly pleasantly, and Rhys goes pale and veers away to put August — of all people — between them. Fiona gets the sense that she’s missed some truly spectacular intimidation. She’ll have to ask Sasha.

“From here, we go on foot,” Athena says. “If we drive, they’ll just take us out before we even reach the edge of Sanctuary’s shadow. If we let them see us coming, we might even get a chance to explain.”

“Why exactly are we being so cautious?” Sasha says. “I mean, there’s no way they haven’t seen us coming already, right? It seems kind of like overkill.”

“You don’t know the Raiders,” Athena says. “Ex-military, like a good firefight, don’t believe in playing fair.”

“Aw, how bad can it be?” August says. “It’s not like we’re launching an all-out attack on Sanctuary.” He looks around. “Lucky for us.”

“Let’s just say that I know who they answer to,” Athena says. “And she isn’t exactly my biggest fan.”

“Right,” Rhys says. “So by _not my biggest fan_ , do you mean—” He mimes. “Hey, Athena! Long time no see! Remember that time you killed my puppy? Let me buy you a drink for old times’ sake.” He crosses his arms and frowns. “—Or do you mean: Hey, Athena! You killed my puppy and now I’m going to ruin your life.” He drops the act. “Kind of a big difference there, if you ask me.”

“Let me see,” Athena says, and shifts a little, and her body language changes entirely: a little less efficient, a little more showy, just as aggressive but less subtle. “Hey, Athena! Long time no see! Remember that time you helped some Hyperion nobody open a Vault and take over the corporation, and then he killed my boyfriend and used me as a power cell in an active volcano? Let me put you in front of a firing squad for old times’ sake.” She straightens up, and shrugs. “Little of both?”

“So not your biggest fan,” Rhys says faintly. “Right. Got it.” He turns to Fiona, as they start up the path. “I didn’t know that,” he says. “Did you know that?”

“Yes, Rhys,” Fiona says. “Everyone knew that except for you.”She gives him a second before she takes pity on him. “No, of course I didn’t know that. Athena isn’t really the talkative type.”

“No kidding,” Rhys says, and rubs at the back of his neck, and Fiona wonders if they’re going to do this: the awkwardness, the talking about it, all of the reasons she’s been sitting in the back of a bandit truck with awful suspension for the last four hours accumulating internal bruising.

“Look,” she says. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be, okay? You’re doing fine so far.”

“Sure,” Rhys says. “You didn’t spend the last four hours getting threatened by literally everyone here.”

“Everyone?” Fiona says. “Wait. Even August?”

“Even August,” Rhys says. “And let me tell you, that was some impressive hypocrisy.”

“Wow,” Fiona says. “I mean, no, look. That’s sweet of them or whatever, but seriously, you’re doing fine.” She gives it a moment’s thought. “Maybe next time we can actually find a bed or something, but honestly I’m not too optimistic about that.” If he’s too stupid to figure that one out, Fiona decides, then Rhys deserves to feel awkward. Fortunately, he seems to get it, and gives her a sidelong look.

“Next time, huh?” he says.

“Subtle as a pile of rocks,” Fiona says. “Don’t make me start threatening you, too.”

“I don’t know,” Rhys says, and he sounds like he’s considering it. “I could work with that.”

“You think about that and get back to me,” Fiona says. “I’m going to see how much further we’ve got.” She leaves him looking meditative, and picks up her pace until she’s out of breath, not quite at the next crest yet, and Sasha comes up next to her.

“So,” she says.

“Oh, go on,” Fiona says. “I deserve it.”

Sasha tilts her head. “No,” she says. “I mean, this is hilarious, don’t get me wrong, but it’s kind of good to see you like this, you know? All—” She gestures. “I don’t know. Happy. You haven’t been like this in a while.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fiona says. “Don’t get used to it. I’m sure I’ll be back to normal in a couple of days.”

“Wow,” Sasha says. “You’re a real ray of sunshine. I was being serious.” She leans into a particularly difficult section of the slope, all scree and gravel, for a moment. “So what changed?”

“Huh?” Fiona says. “Oh, you mean — huh. Good question — I don’t really know?”

“Never mind,” Sasha says. “I take it back. I’m going to make so much fun of you.”

“No, hang on,” Fiona says. “Let me come up with something.”

“Sure,” Sasha says. “Because that always turns out great.”

“I mean, it doesn’t always go horribly!” Fiona says, and scrambles the last few steps up to the top of the hill. There’s another, taller one just ahead of them, and Athena’s already halfway up it. Fiona watches, for a moment, and thinks.

“Not so bad from up here,” Sasha says quietly.

“Yeah,” Fiona says, and looks out over the rolling downland, the rising mist, and tries her best to put her thoughts into words. “Nobody gets to pick their story,” she says, not looking at Sasha. “Right? That’s the point. Stories happen, and you get swept up in them, and then you pick up whatever you can find and keep going until the next one comes along and knocks everything down. You just do your best and hope it all works out, you know?” She shrugs, and Sasha nods. “Make sure you have good friends to come along for the ride, that kind of thing. The sort of people who appreciate a good story and don’t mind if you exaggerate.” Fiona starts down the other side of the hill.

“That was a way better answer than I expected,” Sasha says, picking her way down after Fiona. “Did you practice for a while?”

“Nope,” Fiona says. “Just improvising. And I’ve been thinking about it, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “Well, if it helps, I’m definitely borrowing that next time someone asks me a stupid question.”

“Hey,” Fiona says. “Wait till you hear this. It’s even better.” She clears her throat. “You ready?”

“Go for it, Fi,” Sasha says, and Fiona grins.

“You don’t get to pick the story,” she says, “but you might meet some pretty cool people on the way.”

“Cheesy, but somehow epic,” Sasha says. “I like it.”

“Thanks,” Fiona says, jumping from rock to rock and pinwheeling her arms to keep her balance. “I try.”

 

* * *

 

They make it across that valley, and then across another, and Fiona is bent double with her hands on her knees, trying desperately to catch her breath and reinflate her lungs more than halfway, when she gets her first glimpse of Sanctuary. “What the actual,” she manages, and then runs out of breath again and has to take a break to wheeze. “Fuck!”

“Whoa,” August says. “How are we getting up there?”

“We aren’t,” Athena says, hands up, which is when Fiona notices that they don’t have the high ground anymore. Shapes that she had previously dismissed as debris, or possibly exertion-induced hallucinations, start looking considerably more armed, animate, and strategically placed. “It’s coming to us,” Athena goes on. “Don’t move.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Vaughn says, and Fiona raises her hands as well, and then they’re surrounded by figures in patched-together red armor.

After a minute, Rhys clears his throat. “So are we waiting for someone, or what?”

“Don’t give her an excuse—” Athena starts, and then sighs and raises a hand to cover her eyes.

It takes Fiona a second, but then she sees it: a bright spark in the empty sky, and for a moment she remembers her dream — one bullet for two bodies — but this isn’t a dream, and she’s awake, and as she watches it spirals down lazily, like a feather on the wind. As it gets closer, it gets brighter, and Fiona realizes that it isn’t a spark after all but a curl of flame, and one moving towards them at its own leisure. It circles and feints, and then drifts, and finally sinks downwards with sudden purpose, and then blazes up in a sudden flash that leaves Fiona blinking away brightness and what she could swear are the afterimages of wings.

There’s a woman standing in front of them instead, hip cocked and feet planted, and she nods at them.

“—she loves to make an entrance,” Athena finishes. “Lilith.”

“Athena,” the woman — Lilith — says. “Didn’t I try to kill you?”

“Yes,” Athena says. “You did.”

“And who’s this?” Lilith says, and circles them. “Friends?” Fiona watches, and thinks that Athena had captured her physicality perfectly: Lilith moves with an easy grace, and a casual arrogance, but given what they’ve just seen, Fiona can’t blame her. Cool, she thinks. Lilith is cool. “I know about you,” Lilith says to August. “Aw, you’re just a puppy, aren’t you. And you,” she says to Sasha. “Hear you’re pretty hot stuff, for a Pandoran.” She tilts her head at Vaughn. “No idea who you are, but that’s fine, and — yep, I know you,” she says to Fiona. “Or I know your business, anyway — if you’re still in the game. Oh, wow.” She turns to Athena. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I’m beginning to get that feeling,” Athena says. “Shouldn’t have what?”

“This?” Lilith says, and jerks her head at Rhys. “Pretty boy. Legs. Does he have a name?”

“I’m right here,” Rhys says, though he’s absolutely scarlet when Fiona looks over, and she snorts.

“No he doesn’t,” she says. “Pretty boy works just fine.”

“Please,” August says, and turns to one of the Raiders. “Shoot me.”

“Huh,” Lilith says, and shrugs. “Fine. Bring them up. Seriously, though,” she says, turning to Rhys as the Raiders fall back; Fiona hears rotors as they clear the bracken away, and she counts at least three buzzards. “How have you lasted this long?”

“Usually we leave him in the storage compartment,” Sasha says, and Lilith smiles.

“See, this is more like it,” Lilith says. “I could get to like you.”

Fiona wants, instinctively, to be sarcastic and standoffish; it’s in her nature to be distrustful, and even more so to posture, but it seems a little pointless. For a start, she’s pretty sure that Lilith is better at it than her. For another, it’s hilarious to watch Rhys fall over himself trying to be casual. “Is this what it was like being around me?” she says to Athena, under her breath. “Back when I was useless?”

“This is what it’s like being around you all the time,” August says, and Sasha elbows him. “It is!”

“So is he always like this? All legs and hero worship?” Lilith says, a little more at ease now that she isn’t a walking intimidation tactic. She tilts her head to the side. “I could get used to this.”

“Don’t ask me,” Fiona says. “You should have seen him around Zer0, though. Vault hunters.” She shrugs.

“You’re a vault hunter, aren’t you?” Lilith says, and there’s an edge to her grin that makes Fiona feel like she’s stepped into a bear trap. “Vault hunters, huh?”

“I’m — look — it’s complicated,” Fiona says. “You know what I mean.”

“Complicated,” Lilith says, and doesn’t stop grinning for a second. “Sure.” She shrugs. “Whatever you want to call it. None of my business.”

“Firehawk,” one of the Raiders calls.

Lilith turns and nods, and then turns back, hands on her hips. “Well, what are you waiting for? Pick a ride, let’s go.” She nods at Sasha. “You’re with me. We have talking to do if you’re who they say you are. Meet the new boss, all that fun stuff.”

Fiona notices, as she follows them, the tattoos curling up Lilith’s arm, over her shoulder and collarbone and throat, and gives Athena a questioning look as she steps onto the strut of one of the buzzards, hooking her elbow around the frame.

Athena shakes her head. “Later,” she says, over the increasing noise of the rotors, and then they’re in the air, and Fiona watches the mountains fall away beneath them into shadow as they rise into the sky, heading straight for Sanctuary.

 

* * *

 

When they land, Fiona gets a quick impression — radial streets, buildings a few stories high at most — and it takes her longer to catch her breath than usual, this high up, but the sun is clear and crisp and warm in a way that it isn’t further down in the foothills. “Welcome to Sanctuary,” Lilith says. “Built on a Dahl mining ship, left behind as part of a cover-up, what else is new.” She gestures, a broad sweeping motion that encompasses most of the central hub. “We cleaned it up and got it in the sky and kept it safe, and now it’s ours.”

“We?” Fiona says, and Athena shakes her head, but Lilith just shrugs.

“Before your time, probably,” she says. “A friend. Good guy. Didn’t make it.”

One bullet for two bodies, Fiona remembers unbidden; _killed my boyfriend_ , and then she wonders: stars in the shape of a person, leaping forward. Lilith doesn’t seem like the sort to just stand by.

“That’s why we’re here,” Athena says, and Lilith narrows her eyes. “Vault business.”

“Yeah,” Lilith says. “I hear you got one of them open. How’d that go for you?”

“Not great,” Fiona admits.

“Funny how that happens,” Lilith says. “Come on, let’s get you set up back at base. May as well get comfortable. This sounds like a long story.”

It isn’t, not really, but they tell it again anyway: Fiona starts at Old Haven, and Rhys picks up when Vallory gets involved, and Sasha jumps in to explain what happened on Helios, because Fiona nor Rhys are too inclined to think about that too much if they can help it, and then the Traveler is sinking into dust and Fiona and Rhys are stepping into the vault.

“Wait,” Lilith says. “Let me guess. It showed you something — no idea what — and you believed it, right?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says.

“It’s — well, it’s — a Vault,” Rhys says. “Not many people make it inside, right? Isn’t the point that whatever you find inside, that’s the real deal, whatever it is?” He leans back in his chair. “It’s meant to be worth it.”

“Newsflash,” Lilith says, “how many Vaults do you know about? Real ones, not just rumors.” She counts them off on her fingers. “Destroyer, Sentinel, Warrior, Traveler. None of those ended well, in case you missed it.”

“Destroyer,” Fiona says, “right, I know those — wait — Sentinel?” She tries to remember. “On Elpis, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the important one,” Lilith says. “Or at least it is if you’re talking about shitty ideas.” She props her elbows up on the table. “I got there a little late — this one took out the Guardian,” she adds, looking at Athena, “had all the fun — but let’s just say you aren’t in great company. You remember your dead boss?” she says to Rhys. “Or your undead dead boss. Whatever you want to call him. He got that one open, got more than he expected.” Lilith shrugs. “Sounds like it showed him something as well.”

“Wait,” Vaughn says. “Handsome Jack? You’re talking about him?” Lilith nods. “Showed him what, exactly?”

“No idea,” she says. “Ask Athena.”

“Just because I was there doesn’t mean that I know,” Athena says, but she leans in towards the table anyway. “All I know is that the Vault got inside his head, somehow, showed him what he wanted to see. He thought it was some sort of weapon, and then the Vault made him a throne, and he said—” She hesitates. “—He said that he got it. He said that he understood.” Athena scowls. “And then _somebody_ decided to be dramatic.”

“She means me,” Lilith says, “in case you couldn’t tell.”

“It’s a long story,” Athena says. “Especially the part where you tried to murder me.”

“Collateral damage!” Lilith says. “Anyway, you survived, didn’t you?” She shakes her head, impatient. “He was doing the whole ranting thing, maniacal laughter, you name it. I thought we could all use a break.”

“You exploded an unknown Eridian artifact in his face,” Athena says, voice flat.

“I got to the point!” Lilith says. “Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. And then he tried to wake the Warrior, and the rest is history. Except better, because I’m in it.”

“The Vault showed him the Warrior,” Athena explains. “Guess it left out the part where he died.”

“Right,” Lilith says, and spreads her hands. “See? You can’t trust it, whatever you saw.”

“Waking the — wait,” Fiona says. “The Warrior — that was some sort of Vault monster, right? Like the Traveler?”

“Except with more lava,” Lilith says. “Yep.”

“So what’s a Sleeper?” Rhys says. “And how do we know it isn’t some kind of trap?”

“Sleeper?” Lilith says. “No idea. Never heard of it. And who’s setting the trap? Eridians?” She looks meaningfully at Athena. “They’re pretty scarce, last I heard.”

“I don’t know,” Rhys says. “But it’s the only answer that makes sense, right? Set up these treasure hunts, and the best you can hope for is murder tentacles. Sounds like a trap to me.”

“Look,” Lilith says. “I don’t know. Look at it this way: we have these huge rotors on Sanctuary, right? We have to if we want to stay in the air. And sometimes we get rakks, that kind of thing, get sucked into the engines and—” She gestures, more eloquently than Fiona would like. “—Red mist, right? And the last thing the poor fuckers are probably thinking is, _shit, I fucked up, what kind of sick fuck invented this_. But it’s not like the rotors are traps. They just can’t imagine anyone who would need them to fly.” Lilith shrugs. “Same thing. Or maybe not, but either way: who knows?”

Rhys looks thoughtful. “Maybe,” he says. “It doesn’t make much difference to the rakks, does it?”

“You got me there,” Lilith says, and laughs. “Sleeper, though, wow. That sounds like bad business. Sounds like some legendary bullshit. Sleeping giants, that kind of thing.”

“Any idea where the name is from, at least?” Sasha says. “I know, stories aren’t worth anything, but even that might help.”

“Funny thing,” Lilith says. “For a planet where we don’t know the history before we got here, and we can’t read any of the writing on the wall, and there’s nobody left to ask, Pandora sure has a lot of stories, right?” She looks around, and everyone nods. “Well, where do they start? They have to come from somewhere, but who’s the first person who told the story of the Vault? I don’t have any good answers for you,” Lilith says, “but I know about the first time anybody ever heard of the Warrior, and that wasn’t a story until then, and it wasn’t a person talking, either.”

“Pandora,” Fiona says, because she thinks she knows the answer already. “You think Pandora is — I mean, the planet, the whole thing — some kind of, I don’t know, something?”

“Like I said,” Lilith says. “I don’t have the answers. I’ve just seen a lot of really weird shit — like, _really_ weird, let me tell you — and sometimes if you ask enough questions you find yourself right back where you started.”

Fiona nods, but she can’t stop thinking about it. People always want to believe a good story. That’s how legends get made — the same story, told over and over, the same path walked again and again until nothing can wipe it out: not time, not distance, not death — and it’s how they keep going, even when there’s nobody left for the telling.

Pandora, Fiona thinks, is a planet built on legends, and she doesn’t want to think what she does next, but she can’t help it: like ice water down her spine, like a certainty that she just can’t shake, like the feeling that she’s being watched.

Whatever it is — Fiona thinks, and immediately wishes that she hadn’t, but there’s no undoing it once it’s done — the Sleeper sounds like a story for the ages.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, Fiona goes out on the balcony and looks out across Sanctuary. It all comes down to stories — sometimes Fiona thinks that her life has just been a series, one after another, and she’ll never actually do anything on her own — when one ends, the next begins, and she’s swept away all over again. It could be worse, and given a choice, Fiona will almost always pick a good story over a bad truth, but she wonders sometimes what it would be like to look at a possibility, a call to adventure, and to turn her back. She pulls a chair up and leans her elbows on the railing and thinks: Sanctuary seems like a nice place to stay, for a while.

Of course, Fiona can’t do that, because she can’t leave Sasha — she can’t leave Rhys — and her friends, the people who are only here because she asked them to come, to figure this out and face it alone. She isn’t stupid, and she isn’t selfish enough, and Fiona doesn’t know which is worse, but she knows that neither has made her happy.

“Hey,” Rhys says. “Mind if I join you?”

“Plenty of room,” Fiona says, and drags her chair over to make room.

They sit in silence for a while, and eventually Rhys says: “You looked like you were thinking, back there. About what Lilith said: stories, and asking questions, and where it all starts.” When Fiona glances over, he isn’t looking at her, but out across the city, and she notices for the first time that he has dark circles to match hers, and that his back is a hollow, curved outwards — as if he’s protecting his chest — as if he’s carrying weight on his shoulders. Rhys doesn’t ask what she was thinking, but Fiona answers anyway.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It just seems like — it’s never over, is it? We just keep going, and no matter what — there’s always more. It’s never enough.”

“It definitely feels like it,” Rhys says. “Man. Remember when I walked into that back room—”

“You had no idea what you were doing,” Fiona says, “and I thought, hey — one more Hyperion jackass, looking for an easy score.”

“Hey,” Rhys says. “Guilty as charged. You had my number from day one.”

“See,” Fiona says, “I thought I did! And then — I mean, it was a long day, let’s leave it at that, but — I didn’t. I was so sure, and then you—” She cuts herself off. “This is so stupid, but you said, _Do you want to do the honors?_ — and I thought, what if I’m wrong. Wouldn’t that be a pain in the ass.” She snorts. “At least I got that part right.”

“Sure,” Rhys says. “You tell yourself that.”

“Oh, believe me, I will,” Fiona says. “It’s a good story, anyway.”

“And that’s what counts,” Rhys says, and moves over to press his shoulder to hers. “At least we know where this one comes from.”

“I still tell it better than you do,” Fiona says, and leans into him, just a little, barely selfish, before she gets up. “Might get an early night,” she adds, and waits.

“I, uh,” Rhys says, and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way — I’d love to, I mean, I’m not — but I don’t sleep that well,” he says, words tumbling over each other, and Fiona wants with a sudden fierceness to snarl, and to stroke his hair back, and to spit in the face of whatever keeps Rhys up at night.

She doesn’t let him see, though, because it’s too messy and too much, and because it won’t last. “Sure,” Fiona says, instead. “I’d hate to get elbowed with this,” she adds, and taps his cybernetic elbow with her fingernail.

Fiona pretends not to see his grateful smile, either.

It’s just as well that she sleeps alone, anyway, because Fiona’s dreams are vicious — they sink claws into her as soon as she falls asleep, and drag her under — and she falls for what seems like an age until, at last, she looks around, and sees the rubble for what it is. There’s a path laid out for her, heading straight into the wreckage of Helios, and Fiona follows it between girders and over broken glass and through the smoke until she comes to its center, the quietness amidst the destruction.

There is a desk, and behind it, there once were vast windows; Fiona can feel glass crunching underfoot, though, neat small cubes like ice, and all that is left of the structure is the framework of twisted metal.

On one side of the desk, she sees a flash of familiar yellow, and doesn’t look at it any more closely than she has to; on the other, she sees a great deal of blood, dried nearly black in the heat and the smoke, and great jagged shards of window, like pieces of sky.

When Fiona looks back up, there’s a shadow behind the desk — a familiar one; she knows its smile — and she knows then that whatever it might look like, Fiona is the only person here. The only devils here are her own.

_Looks like you found me. So now what?_

“I think I’m supposed to kill you,” Fiona says. “Isn’t that what you do with the darkness? You find a light, right? You find something. You fight it.” She casts around, but there are no weapons at hand, nothing but the distant crackle of flames and the slow creak of cooling metal.

_Fight it!_

Laughter, again, and this time Fiona wants to join in, like it’s a funny story, or a good joke.

 _That’s cute_. _I bet you think you’re the hero, too, huh._

“I’m no hero,” Fiona says. “I mean, I’m not — a villain.” She pauses. “Or — but I’m not a hero.”

_No two ways about it, kid. It’s one or the other, in here._

“I want to be the one telling the story,” Fiona says, and doesn’t know why, but instantly knows that it’s true. It isn’t helpful — she doesn’t know how to do that, or even how to start — but it’s the only true thing she’s found, in here, where even the flames are Vault-purple, and the wreckage is already melting away around her. It’s the only truth that she knows.

 _Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that means you have to win_.

The walls are gone, the windows have faded, and Fiona might never have been here, but she knows where she is anyway; that’s happening to her more and more often, lately. The floor is smooth, and the light is shifting in familiar patterns, and Fiona can’t quite focus on the geometry, but she understands it nevertheless.

In the center of the Vault, there is a throne, waiting, and the shadow is gone, but Fiona knows whose smile it wears, knows why it was so familiar: she knows how it feels, too, has seen it in the mirror, and now it’s reflected back at her, and she thinks she knows what the shadow is, too. Fiona thinks that she might finally know why she’s so afraid of it.

 _It’s yours, kid. You’ve earned it_.

“No way,” Fiona says, even as she crosses the floor, even as she climbs the stone — and it’s warm, and she remembers this — and it always ends the same way. “I’m not doing this.”

 _That’s what I said, too_.

“I’ll find another way,” Fiona says, “there has to be one — I’m not the hero — I’m not doing this,” she shouts, “I’m not—”

She takes the throne.

 _You already have_.

“—Fiona!” Sasha says, close by, and Fiona wakes up and scrambles back, kicking at the sheets, until she has her back to the wall: smooth and cool and solid and real, and when her eyes adjust Fiona can see her standing a little way back. “Sorry,” Sasha says. “I could hear you from down the hall.”

“Shit,” Fiona says, and pushes her hair out of her face. “Shit,” she says, more quietly this time, and then whispers it again, and scrubs at her face until her eyes are stinging. “I’m fine, it’s fine — sorry about that, I’ll be okay — don’t worry about me,” she says.

“If it helps,” Sasha says, “I couldn’t sleep, either.” She gives Fiona a minute before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Want to see if there’s anything to do in a small town on a mining ship at three in the morning?”

Fiona laughs, a little shakily, but smiles. “I think we can get to the roof from the balcony,” she says, “if I give you a boost,” and she can see Sasha’s grin even in the dark.

“Sounds like a plan,” Sasha says. “Let’s see how much trouble we can find before everyone else wakes up.”

“Bet you I can find more,” Fiona says, more out of reflex than anything else.

Sasha snorts. “You’re on, sis,” she says. “Hope you like losing.”

“I’m old,” Fiona says. “That means I have years of experience. Go on, I’ll catch up.”

“Age before beauty,” Sasha says lightly, and gets up. “Race you!”

Fiona watches her go, and she doesn’t cry — Fiona only ever cries when she’s angry, and she isn’t angry now, just shaken and small and scared — but she takes a moment to breathe, and to remind herself of where she is, and to remind herself of who she is, as well.

When she feels as if she’s on firm ground again, Fiona gets up and pulls on her boots and goes to find both Sasha and a much-needed distraction: the more inexplicable and inexcusable the better, Fiona thinks, and feels more herself by the moment.

 

* * *

 

They don’t actually find too much trouble, because Sanctuary really is too small for that — there’s a black market, sure, but that happens any time enough people get together and decide that life is too boring without a little petty crime to get them through the day, and Fiona nearly tips over a slot machine trying to get the reels to line up — but they do notice things, because that’s what they do best. Sasha points out the number of crates outside a munition store, and there’s a clinic that seems better-stocked than most, and by the time they’ve reached the other side of town Fiona has a vague picture of what she thinks is going on.

She sits, cross-legged, outside one of Scooter’s old outposts, a few feet from the very edge of the city — the pavement drops off into nothing, just a few girders left to show where it had once been anchored — and draws in the dust with one finger, and says: “It looks like they’re pretty worried, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sasha says, sitting next to her. “I mean, I guess they have to stock up anyway — flying city, you know? — but that was a lot of guns. And a lot of medical supplies.” She hugs her knees to her chest. “Lilith didn’t say anything?’

“Not a word,” Fiona says. “I mean, I don’t know, wasn’t this place overrun with bandits before they cleaned it out? Could just be a territorial thing.”

“I get the feeling that Lilith isn’t too worried about bandits,” Sasha says. “She might even have fun.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says, and watches the clouds in silence for a moment, skimming by just barely underneath Sanctuary’s engines. “Seems like the sort of thing she’d mention, if she thought it mattered.”

“Sure,” Sasha says, sounding anything but. She sighs. “Sorry for dragging you into this.”

It takes Fiona a moment to even understand, and then she laughs. “Hey,” she says. “Come on. Don’t be sorry. You know I’d rather be here if it comes down to — whatever it is this time — monsters or aliens. Or,” Fiona adds, voice a conspiratorial whisper, “even firemelons.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t want anything to do with that,” Sasha says. “I mean — I know — you don’t have to remind me. Sisters, right?”

“And I always keep my promises,” Fiona says.

“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get what you want too,” Sasha says. “I mean, I haven’t seen you smile like that — you know, down at Outwash — for a while.” She shrugs. “I just worry, sometimes.”

“Wow,” Fiona says. “You sound like me. That’s not good.” It isn’t — Fiona is bitter and cranky and messy, and she doesn’t want that for Sasha — she doesn’t want Sasha to lose her fierce joyful smile, and the spark that makes it so impossible to look away from her; she doesn’t want Sasha to lose her easy sunshine.

“Hey,” Sasha says, and elbows her gently in the ribs. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It could be way worse.” She thinks for a minute. “I mean, I could sound like Gortys. That would be worse, right?”

“It would definitely be different,” Fiona says. “Hey, are they — did we ever find out — last we heard, they were heading for Aquator, right?”

“I think they accidentally, uh,” Sasha says, and shrugs a little helplessly. “Took over a moon? On the way? Gortys was very excited. It was hard to tell. I think they’re having a good time, though,” she says. “Which is what counts, right?”

“I miss that little robot,” Fiona says. “But I’m glad she’s having fun. Getting out. Seeing the galaxy and all that.” She smiles. “Someone has to, right?”

“Enjoying the view?” a voice calls, and Fiona turns to see Lilith crossing the street. “Not bad, huh?”

“I’ve seen better,” Sasha says, getting to her feet, and Lilith snorts.

“Sure you have,” she says, and bumps shoulders with Sasha on her way past. “Catch you in a few.” She sits down next to Fiona and inches forward until her legs are dangling off the edge of the city. Of course Lilith doesn’t have to worry about falling, Fiona thinks. “So,” Lilith says. “Find the answer you were looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says. “A whole lot of questions, sure. I don’t know about answers.”

“Eh,” Lilith says. “Same thing, right? Sooner or later they have to start answering themselves.” They sit in silence for a moment, and then Lilith hums under her breath, looking down at the peaks passing under their feet. “Look,” she says. “I didn’t want to say this before, not in front of everyone, right? It sucks when someone’s like, hey! This probably isn’t going to work and nobody has any idea what they’re doing anyway! But we didn’t know what we were doing,” Lilith says, “and we kind of made a mess of it.”

“Well, we’re screwed, then,” Fiona says, and Lilith punches her in the shoulder.

“No way,” she says. “You kind of remind me of myself, you know? Less awesome, obviously, but hey. It happens.”

“I feel like that shouldn’t be a compliment,” Fiona says. “No offense, I mean, but. Just saying.”

“None taken,” Lilith says. “Look.” She shrugs. “We thought we were saving the world, right? And we did, for a while. I mean, it could have been way worse.” She flicks a pebble out into space. “But in the end, all we did was hurry things along. Moxxi, she was right all along. She knew something was wrong, something big, and we tried to stop it, and maybe we just made it happen quicker. Maybe we just gave it that push.”

Fiona doesn’t know what to say to that, and after a moment Lilith laughs.

“Pretty heavy, right?” she says. “I mean, I don’t know. I’m just guessing. When everything goes wrong, you end up with a lot of time to wonder if you could have changed it if you’d just been quicker, or better, or smarter.” Lilith brushes the dust from her hands. “Anyway, I wouldn’t tell the others, but it’s up to you. Fair warning, or whatever, right?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says. “Thanks, Lilith.”

“No problem,” Lilith says. “Hey, take a look.” She points at the horizon, and for a moment, Fiona can’t make out more than just another series of peaks, hazy through the clouds, but then she realizes: they’re moving. The line of the horizon is shifting — sinking — slowly, but visibly, and those are mountains. This far away, Fiona can’t hear them, but she can imagine the sound of thousands of tons of barren rock, tempered strength, crumbling into the ground. She can imagine the taste of it, dry dust under her tongue, and the endless inevitability. “Better get moving, huh?” Lilith says, and gets up. “And hey, good luck, okay?” She grins. “Sounds like you’ll need it.”

After a while, Fiona gets up, and goes to try and compensate for her early start with scalding coffee and a show of false confidence, and manages to corner Athena afterwards. “Lilith,” she says, while they’re waiting for the Raiders to bring the buzzards around. “She said something about what happened, you know, before, and I was wondering—” Fiona hesitates. “—was it really that important? I mean, I know that’s where it all started or whatever, but that’s not how it works, is it? You can’t just point to one moment and go, that was it. That’s why this happened.”

“How much do you know about Sirens?” Athena asks, which isn’t an answer, but Fiona’s used to this, so she shrugs.

“Not much,” she says, and then revises her statement. “Actually, nothing, beyond that if you fight one you’ll lose and probably explode. Why?”

“She’s one,” Athena says. “Those tattoos? Lilith was born with them. It means that she can use eridium to heal, and she can take everything from a single round to a rocket to the chest and it’ll just go straight through.”

“She didn’t mention that,” Fiona says.

“It wouldn’t be dramatic enough,” Athena says. “She came to Pandora to hunt a Vault, and she’s had more than enough time to regret it. So — keeping in mind that I’ve seen her take out an entire bandit camp in two minutes, laughing the whole time, because she thought it would look cool — if anybody knows, it would be Lilith.”

“Sounds like it,” Fiona says.

“You aren’t telling me something,” Athena says, narrowing her eyes. “What is it?”

“No,” Fiona says. “I mean, yes, but it isn’t important.”

“Not important as in _I have no idea what I’m doing_ ,” Athena says, “or not important as in _the ghost of Handsome Jack is borrowing my body when I’m not using it_?”

“Not important as in I never have any idea what I’m doing,” Fiona says, “and it wouldn’t help anyway.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Athena says. “You know that doesn’t make it better.”

Before Fiona has to reply, she’s interrupted by the sound of rotors, and so she just shrugs and gives Athena her worst grin. “I know!” she yells. “It’ll be fine!”

“No!” Athena shouts back. “No, it won’t!”

What if Lilith is right, though, Fiona thinks. What if they are just making things worse?

It isn’t a pleasant thought, and it itches at her like a guilty secret, but Fiona’s used to keeping those.

On the way back to the Highlands, hanging out of the side of a buzzard, she watches the mountains go by — still standing, at least for the moment — until they disappear into the clouds, reduced to a vague outline by mist, and braces herself against the world’s inevitable return.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Vaughn says. “What now?”

“We go back,” Rhys says, beating Fiona to it, and he turns to her. “If the Traveler is what started this, maybe we can find something there to end it. That makes sense, right?”

“Oh, come on,” August says. “Seriously? That’s it? We end up right back where we started?” He shakes his head. “I hate this story.”

“It does make sense,” Sasha says. “And at least we know what we’re dealing with this time.”

“No we don’t,” Athena says, arms crossed. “We have no idea what’s causing this. We have no idea what to do about it. We only barely know why we’re going back.”

“Inspirational!” Rhys says. “Thanks, Athena.”

“No, look,” Fiona says. “Athena’s right. But it’s still the best we’ve got.”

“Maybe the best we’ve got isn’t good enough,” August says. “I mean, this whole thing, we’ve been guessing the whole time, right? What if we’re guessing wrong, huh?”

“Are you saying you have a better idea?” Fiona says, and it comes out a little sharper than she’d hoped, but then it’s too late. “Because from where I’m standing, nobody else has any suggestions. Anybody?” She waits. “Great! Right. So that’s what we’re doing.” She ignores the look on August’s face, the one that says: here we go again. “Get back to the Blight, try not to die, and then we can all pretend this never happened.”

“Fiona,” Sasha says, “nobody’s saying that you’re wrong.”

“Sure looks like it from here,” Fiona says, and starts down the hill. For a second, nobody follows, and then she hears footsteps, scrambling to catch up with her. “Look, I’m really not in the mood—”

“I don’t care what mood you’re in!” Sasha says, skidding a little before she regains her balance. “Seriously, Fiona, what’s going on? You aren’t usually this, I don’t know, whatever it is.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Fiona says, and thinks: yes she is. Yes, she usually is this difficult; yes, she usually is this unreasonable; yes, she usually is this willful and stubborn and impossible. Sasha is just too nice to say it. Fiona wishes that she would, just to get it out of the way, but then she doesn’t really; if Sasha gives up on her, then she really doesn’t have much left. “I’m fine. We’ll get this over with, go home, call it a day.”

“You know August,” Sasha says. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s kind of an asshole.”

“I know,” Fiona says, “but I don’t need someone else pointing out that I have no idea what I’m doing.” Horrified at herself, and yet unable to stop, Fiona grimaces. “I already know that, okay? I know this is a complete trainwreck. It’s just — I can’t do anything about that, and — it’s not like reminding me is going to help.”

“No, I know,” Sasha says. “Look. If any of us have a chance of figuring this out, it’s you. You’re good at that: thinking big, you know, making it up as you go.” Fiona looks back; Sasha isn’t looking at her, too busy scrambling down the last few steps of the hill, but Sasha isn’t the type to say something just to make Fiona feel better, either. “August’s a jackass. He’s trying to help, but he’s being a jackass. Just — you know we’re here — that’s the point right? Of friends? So you don’t have to do things alone.” She straightens up, coming to a stop. “Anyway, you know I’m on your side.”

“I must look like such an idiot right now,” Fiona says. “Yeah, I know. Thanks, Sash.”

“Hey,” Sasha says. “You don’t. And besides, everyone’s allowed to look like an idiot sometimes, right?” She grins. “Rhys looks like one all the time, and he seems to get away with it.”

“Rhys wouldn’t last a day if he didn’t have that stupid — that — oh, no you don’t. I see what you’re doing,” Fiona says. “No way. I am not giving you another excuse to make fun of me.”

“Sure you aren’t,” Sasha says, and proceeds to make relentless fun of Fiona all the way back to the caravan anyway.

They make it all the way down from Outwash, and three days into the endless canyons and desert basins, the caravan breaks down, because it’s the worst possible time for something like that to happen, so of course it does.

Vaughn takes one look at the engine and throws his hands up. “No way,” he says. “If this was a computer? Sure. But that looks like smoke.” He backs away. “Not a chance.”

“Is that smoke?” August says. “Looks normal to me.”

Vaughn, still backing away, shrugs. “Have fun!” he calls. “I’ll be over here. Behind a tree. And a pile of rocks. And maybe under the truck, for good measure.”

Fiona looks at Athena, who just shrugs.

August prods at the engine for a while, flat on his back in the dust, before he forgets that he’s lying under the caravan and tries to sit up. Fiona listens to the metallic clang and the spate of cursing and tries, unsuccessfully, to stifle her laughter before August manages to sit up, only slightly the worse for wear. “Still looks normal,” he says. “The little guy has no idea what he’s talking about. Might be something under the dash, though.”

“Great,” Rhys says. “Sasha?”

“I’ll be behind that pile of rocks,” Sasha says.

“Thanks!” Fiona calls, as she retreats. “Super helpful!”

In the end, Fiona pulls out every panel under the dash and digs the schematics out from under one of the bunks and spends a completely unrewarding hour learning how to read them. She gets lost in the diagrams, picturing how they work and holding them together in her mind against the wires in her hands, and doesn’t notice until she’s almost finished that Rhys is standing next to her, doing absolutely nothing to be helpful — at least not from the knees down, but Fiona isn’t really inclined to be overgenerous — especially when she’s been stuck halfway under the dash for what feels like a minor eternity.

“If you aren’t going to help,” Fiona says, jamming yet another wire back into place, “you could at least go stand somewhere more decorative—” which is, of course, when the engine coughs and turns over, and she stares at the wiring in astonishment. “—or not,” she finishes. “Wow. That was awesome," Fiona says, and gets to her feet, aware that she sounds far too surprised.

"Holy shit," Rhys says, sounding exactly as astonished. "Are you — I mean, is it just me, or was that really—"

"Fuck," Fiona breathes, and kisses him so hard that she has to pull him back by the lapels to keep him from going over backwards down the steps.

"—hot," Rhys finishes breathlessly. "Or you could just, sure, that works too."

"I'm hot shit!" Fiona says, delighted, and when he tries to kiss her again she spins away, riding high on the thrill. "That was amazing!"

"Seriously?" Rhys says. "Wow. I mean, it was just an engine — are you — really?"

"Oh, come on," Fiona says. "You can't tell me that wasn't cool.” She crosses her arms, feet planted and hip cocked. "I dare you."

"No way," Rhys says. “I know that face. That feed-my-ego-monster face.” He looks at the floor, then over her shoulder, then anywhere but Fiona's face, and all the while he goes steadily pinker until his face must be hot with it. “And it wasn’t really that cool.”

“Liar,” Fiona says, and she already knows what he’s going to say, but that’s not the point. Fiona wants him to admit it. She wants to _win_. “What? What was that? I can't hear you," she adds, and there it is: Rhys is scowling the way he only ever does when the alternative is a flustered, involuntary, entirely genuine smile.

"Fine!" he says, and throws his hands up. "Fine. You're hot shit, Fiona. Happy now?"

"Yes!" Fiona says, and punches the air. "I am totally hot shit."

"So are you," Rhys starts, and she turns away, stuffing wiring back under the dashboard. "Oh, come on."

"This wouldn't take as long if you helped," Fiona says, and when he just stares, nonplussed, throws up her hands. "And then I would be free? To do other things?"

She hopes to hell that Rhys isn't having a particularly obtuse day. Fiona isn't shy about what she wants, not when she’s sure, but she wants to preserve whatever this is — Rhys before he’s had coffee, messy-haired; beside her on the balcony, looking out over Sanctuary; standing up on a moving stinger to cover her, exactly where Fiona needs him before she even has to ask — as long as possible, this odd synchronicity, this welcome wordless duality.

"Oh!" Rhys says. "Uh. Yeah. Yes. Things. Right."

“Finally,” Fiona says, and tries not to sound relieved. “He gets it. Well, come on," she adds, and shoves the mess of loose circuitry aside, making room next to her.

"Sure," Rhys says, and they fall into an easy rhythm, just like that.

 

* * *

 

As they get closer — not with any particular urgency, but an hour at a time, as the mountains surrounding them go dark and basaltic and the sky shades through from blue to indigo and brightens again to the color of bruised fruit — Fiona starts sleeping more lightly, six hours one night and four the next, and waking when the stars are still out. The first time it happens, she turns over and pulls her jacket over her head and tries to go back to sleep; it makes no difference. Even with her eyes closed, she can see the sky, barely darker at night than it is at noon, and can feel the hum of the engine, even though they’ve stopped for the night. She sleeps outside, instead, and stares sightless into the darkness until the sun comes up, and spends restless hours thinking about nothing at all.

Rhys isn’t doing much better. They don’t talk about it, but he’s drowsier in the day, and fading into a sort of half-consciousness even when the sun is at its brightest; Fiona feels as if she’s slipping away, into a reality halfway between theirs and something else — day and night, waking and dreaming — and the closer they get, the worse she feels. Sasha notices, but doesn’t say anything; if August cares, he doesn’t mention it either.

Athena starts keeping watch at night. Fiona isn’t sure whether Athena is protecting them from something else or from each other — maybe both — but she trusts Athena to take care of it, either way. She’s too tired to care, if Fiona’s being honest with herself. At least she hasn’t dreamed since Sanctuary. This close to the Blight, Fiona thinks that she might not be able to tell the difference anyway.

She isn’t asleep when the world changes, though. Fiona is sitting in the back of the technical, a few hours’ drive from the wreckage of Helios if the light holds, and another night in the open if it doesn’t, and between one breath and another the sky splits down the middle. It takes Fiona a second to notice, and then she wonders if it’s always been like that — the visual equivalent of thunder, and her eyes hurt when she tries to look at it — peeling back like a membrane, the vestiges of a blinking leviathan.

It’s wrong, of course. It’s all wrong, like pressure on the inside of her skull, so much of it that Fiona can’t breathe, or speak, or even scream for a second, and she can’t close her eyes, either, or she might never be able to see again. She looks down, and the sky doesn’t close — she can feel it like a structural collapse, an emptiness, a vacuum — and the mountains around them are veined with purple light, shaking apart, splintering, and she doesn’t know how to change this. Five years old, and no place to call home, and no idea where to go, and Fiona hadn’t known what to do; ten years old, and Sasha cradling her broken wrist from a job gone wrong and refusing to cry, and Fiona hadn’t been able to make it hurt less; the sky is open, and the ground is falling away beneath them, and she won’t be able to fix this either, and this time she’s on her own.

Fiona’s hands hurt, and she isn’t sure why, but when she looks down she can see the imprints of her own fingernails, dug purple and black into her palms, and she uncurls her fingers one at a time — takes one breath, and then another; keeps her eyes open, and keeps breathing — and when she’s finished, the world is whole again, and she’s shaking too hard to answer when August calls her name.

Athena climbs out of the front seat, but Sasha makes it to the back of the technical first — they’ve stopped; when did they stop? Fiona hadn’t noticed that — and she waits, doesn’t climb in until Fiona nods, doesn’t touch her until Fiona blinks hard and works the tension from her shoulders, and then Sasha takes her hands and doesn’t let go.

“What happened?” she says, quietly. “And don’t tell me it was nothing, because I’m your sister, and that wasn’t nothing, and don’t tell me you’re alright, either.”

“Sasha,” Fiona starts, “I’m fine,” and then she stops. “Wait. How did you know? I didn’t say anything — was I talking, or — how did you know?”

“It wasn’t just you. Rhys — he — something happened,” Sasha says. “Not as bad, he’s alright — I mean, the same way you’re alright, and I know you’re lying anyway — but he won’t say. Fiona,” she says, “you have to trust me.”

No, Fiona wants to say; no, she doesn’t, not if it means putting Sasha in danger, and not if it means making Sasha carry a burden that isn’t hers. She doesn’t have to trust anybody, and she doesn’t have to worry about getting it wrong, and she doesn’t have to gut herself like this, in front of everyone. She doesn’t have to be messier, and harder to love, and easier to ignore, than she already is, not if she pretends that it isn’t the truth anyway. Fiona doesn’t have to let Sasha down if she pushes her away before it becomes inevitable.

“It’s the Vault,” Fiona says, instead, because she’s selfish, and greedy, and careless, and maybe it won’t hurt as much once she’s said it out loud. “I think — I have these dreams — I think it wants us,” she says, “I think it wants us back,” and the look on Sasha’s face is like nothing she’s ever seen before. Fiona knows what it feels like, the determination in Sasha’s eyes: it feels like staggering through the dust from a crashed escape pod; it feels like dragging herself through the smoke; it feels like struggling to her feet and taking aim with a gun that she can’t even lift, that last burst of desperate strength. It’s the certainty that, if she doesn’t do this, she won’t have anything worth living for anyway.

It isn’t a look that Fiona wants to see on Sasha’s face, now or ever, but she’s the reason that it’s there, and Fiona wants to close her eyes and turn away and disappear, make it go away forever.

She isn’t five anymore, though, and she isn’t ten, and she doesn’t get to do that. Fiona doesn’t get to leave Sasha to fix this by herself. “I think we have to keep going,” she says, instead, because it’s all she knows how to do. “I think we have to go back now.”

Sasha nods, and takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, Fiona. We can do that. Let’s get moving,” she says to Athena and August, and to Vaughn, on the steps of the caravan. “See if we can beat the sunset.” She turns back to Fiona. “Thanks,” Sasha says. “For telling me.”

“Sorry,” Fiona says, and hates herself for the way it sounds, small and weak and scared. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Sasha says, “please,” and sits with her, lets Fiona close her eyes and pretend to sleep and not say a word until the mountains close around them, ash-flecked and slag-smooth, and the sharp-edged shadow of the horizon follows after.

 

* * *

 

Surrounded by the igneous canyons of the Blight — ever-shifting and hostile, and Fiona can’t help feeling that they’re being led, one way or another, even as they make headway between unfamiliar escarpments — it occurs to Fiona, for the first time, to wonder what it means if they don’t win. If they don’t figure this out, close the Vault or untether it or whatever it takes, will the damaged be localized; does the Vault simply want them back, or will it poison the planet like an infection, and how long will they have, and what will be left afterwards: Fiona comes up with a lot of questions, none of which answer each other, and none of which make her any more optimistic.

Eventually, of course, she reaches the end of her capacity to imagine worst-case scenarios; a minute later, the technical bumps to a stop, and Sasha nudges her shoulder. “We’re here,” she says. “Out of curiosity, do you have any idea — literally anything at all — about what you’re going to do? Please don’t say _wing it_.”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says. “I mean, I was going to, but now that you mention it, I guess not.” She grins, and is relieved that she can still do it. “Look. We’re here. We’ll figure something out.”

“So basically you’re going to wing it, but with a whole lot of motivational fluff thrown in to make me feel better,” Sasha says. “At least you’re feeling better.” She gets up and climbs down, and the ground cracks under her feet. “Careful.”

“I was born careful,” Fiona says, and Sasha winces. “Too much?”

“Way too much,” Sasha says. “Play it cool and you’ll be fine. Hey, maybe you’ll even walk away from an explosion. Hope you brought your sunglasses.”

“I knew I forgot something,” Fiona says.

It’s all talk, what she and Sasha are doing; Sasha never lets Fiona get away with anything for this long, especially once sunglasses get involved, and Fiona — well. She enjoys it, anyway, the storytelling, the making it up as she goes, but Fiona — knows, in the end, that stories are just that. A story isn’t any good against anything real, and all stories, no matter how well-told, have to end eventually.

Grandiose thinking, admittedly, but Fiona feels that she’s earned a little indulgence as they start out across the floor of the canyon on foot. It’s a long walk, and she isn’t in any great hurry, and she wonders how this story would start if she was going to tell it all over again: with Sasha, maybe, calling her before dawn, or in Sanctuary, and then she could go back and tell the rest, or maybe she would start it right here, and bring it back around in the end.

“That doesn’t look good,” Vaughn says, staring into the distance, and Fiona sees it hanging in the air — a spark, a star, a key — and has to force herself to keep walking.

After a while, August says: “Is nobody going to say anything?”

“We were being cool,” Rhys says. “You know, walking in a line, nobody’s smiling, everyone understands that you don’t talk when you’re being, you know,” he says, casting around. “Anybody?”

“Big damn heroes?” Athena suggests.

“Thank you!” Rhys says. “Exactly. Big damn heroes.”

August tilts his head. “I like the sound of that,” he admits.

“Great,” Sasha says. “So can we just walk now, or does anyone else want to be a smartass about it?”

They walk the rest of the way in silence.

“Wait,” Fiona says, when they get close enough to the light that she has to shield her eyes. “Maybe you should wait here, let us go ahead and see what it is.”

“Sure,” August says. “Why don’t we wait on the other side of the planet, and then we’ll have a head start?”

“Very funny,” Rhys says, but he follows Fiona away from the rest of them anyway, until they’re close enough to be able to see — not the shape of it, precisely, but the patterns, the same shifting pieces of a puzzle box, the same shifting light — and hesitates. “Were those good last words?”

“No,” Fiona says, “but mine weren’t so hot either.”

“Sure,” Rhys says, and wanders around it in a neat circle. “So. What now?”

“I guess it really is the last one, this time,” Fiona says. “Same deal, right?”

“No way am I sticking my hand in that,” Rhys says. “Believe me, once was enough.”

“Seriously?” Fiona says. “Now you’re going to start making good choices? I know you saw it too, the whole—” She gestures ineffectually. “You saw the sky — I don’t think that was a warning shot, let’s just say that.”

“Yeah,” Rhys says, “but this? Sucks.”

“Join the club,” Fiona says. “Look. You want to run, be my guest. But Lilith—” She hesitates, because none of this might be fair, but this secret even more particularly so, and Fiona knows, even before she says it, that there’ll be no coming back from this. “Lilith said — they tried, in the end, to stop it, right? On Elpis, they tried to kill Handsome Jack, and she even walked into the Vault and tried to stop that, too, and all it ended up doing was making things worse.”

“That — how long have you — it’s been a _week_ ,” Rhys says, and Fiona can tell that he’s angry, even though her head hurts, this close to the last remnant of the Vault; she can tell that, worse, he’s hurt, and thinks: selfish. “Were you ever even planning to mention it, or were you just going to, I don’t know, run straight at this with your eyes closed and hope for the best?”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Fiona says. “At least this time it wasn’t an actual mass murderer hanging out in my brain!”

"Man," Rhys says, "I'm so glad we can all out that behind us. Seriously? You decided to wait until now to bring that up? Come on.”

“You’re lucky I ever stopped bringing it up!” Fiona says. “Anyway, she was just guessing.”

“She walked into a Vault,” Rhys says. “You don’t think that counts for something?”

“I’m just saying,” Fiona says, aiming for patience, missing by a mile, and landing somewhere in condescension instead. “If we’re going to do this, we have to be sure.”

“Look,” Rhys says. “If you want me to ask if you want to do the honors, no way.” Fiona opens her mouth to argue, and he holds up a hand. “Wait! For one second! Oh my god. Right. Thank you. What I was going to say is: If I have to throw myself into an alien treasure chest that’s out for revenge, which sounds like the worst sequel in history, by the way—”

“Never mind,” Fiona says. “Kill me now.”

“— _then_ I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have, next to me, complaining all the way,” Rhys finishes. “And now I want to die, too, so that’s convenient.”

“I don’t complain all the time!” Fiona says.

“Oh my god,” Rhys says, “yes you do. You probably complain in your sleep.”

“This isn’t cool at all,” Fiona says, but raises her hand anyway, palm open.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rhys says, standing on the other side, hand raised to hers, “but I am the epitome of—”

“Wait!” Fiona says, because something’s wrong, like a glass set ringing just slightly off key, something’s _wrong_ —

—he lowers his hand, chrome finish glinting purple, and Fiona rounds the Vault remnant and grabs his wrist, and turns his hand, palm upwards.

“What,” she says, and doesn’t know whether she’s angry or not, only that she feels cold with it, inside and out, “is this?”

“Oh,” Rhys says. “That.”

“That,” Fiona says, and takes a step back.

Over his palm, projected in purple, is a familiar pattern. Fiona knows it, and she’s seen it before, but never while she’s been awake; it’s the back of a card with no front, a familiar arched symbol, and Fiona stares at it, and she thinks: _What now?_

 

* * *

 

What now: Fiona stares at Rhys, at the way the Vault symbol is reflected in his eyes, and the light it casts over both of them, inconsequential next to that of the remnant, and he says: “Fiona, I swear—”

“I’ve seen this,” Fiona says. “I know what this is.”

“—wait, what?” Rhys says. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“No, I have!” Fiona says. “Sometimes, when I dream, it’s — I mean, in the ones that matter, the Vault dreams, it’s always — there. I don’t know what it is.”

“Vault dreams,” Rhys says. “That’s what you call them?”

“Oh, come on,” Fiona says. “Like you’ve got a better idea.”

“No, I like it,” he says. “I just thought it was me.”

“Look at you,” Fiona says. “No, I think this is some sort of — clue, maybe, or a key, or it’s — oh.” She tilts her head. “That makes sense.”

“Please,” Rhys says, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, doesn’t look away from her, and Fiona thinks, for the first time, that she might be able to see a glimmer of hope, something worth keeping alight between the two of them. “Explain for those of us who aren’t actually in your head.”

“It’s a trump card,” Fiona says. “That has to be it, right? One last gamble.” She starts to smile. “That’s a hell of a story.”

“Wait,” Rhys says. “That’s it? We play this — whatever that means — and we’re done?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says, and she’s grinning now, can feel it all the way across her face, in a way that she knows is too obvious and too wide and too happy. It feels too good for her to stop, though, even if she wanted to, even if she could. “But hey. There’s no way things can get worse, right? That’s what end-of-the-world means. I’ll take my chances.”

“Wow,” Rhys says. “I didn’t know it was possible for me to feel less confident about this, but hey! Live and learn, right?”

“Rhys,” Fiona says, tone very serious, “if this doesn’t work, I just want you to know—”

“Oh, uh, seriously. God,” Rhys says. “No, it’s fine, you don’t have to — don’t — with the feelings, or the friends, or whatever. It really is fine. Seriously.”

“—you were just enough of a complete dick to be likeable,” Fiona finishes. “What? You thought I was going to say something nice?”

“You,” Rhys says, and she can’t tell if he’s delighted or astonished or both, “are a pain in the ass, you know that? You are possibly the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met.”

“Aw,” Fiona says, and grabs his hand, so that the symbol shines through their fingers, just as bright as ever, and she’s stepping out into open space, trusting the story to catch her, and she knows that she won’t fall; in a second, she’ll be flying. In a second, she’ll be free. “Want to bet?” she says, and flings the symbol into the Vault remnant, and the light blooms around them, bright as nothing—

—and then it’s gone.

“That was it?” August says faintly in the distance. “We walked all the way over just for that?”

“It was definitely anticlimactic,” Athena says.

“I don’t know, it looked cool,” Vaughn says, and Sasha snorts.

“Sure,” she says. “If you like light shows with no payoff.”

“Save the world, get heckled,” Rhys says. “Figures.”

“That was easy,” Fiona says, and grins. “You owe me a drink.”

“What?” Rhys says, because apparently old habits die hard. “No I don’t! What for?”

“You just said,” Fiona says. “Saving the world.”

“That was — hey!” Rhys says, as she turns away, and starts after her. “That was a group effort! You don’t get to cash that in!”

“I guess I owe you one as well, then,” Fiona says. “If you’re nice. Which, let me tell you, isn’t going great so far.”

“Oh, come on!” Rhys calls after her. “Fiona! We can work this out!”

Fiona doesn’t turn around, and she doesn’t stop walking, and she doesn’t stop grinning all the way back.

 

* * *

 

The thing about saving the world, Fiona thinks, is that it doesn’t guarantee a comfortable ride home.

They leave Vaughn back at Helios, because he’s been away for long enough as it is, and because he doesn’t have any particular desire to reprise his brief visit to Hollow Point. “Look,” he says. “This was fun, right? But next time you decide to do the whole hero adventure road trip across the planet thing, let me know in advance. That way, I can bring snacks.”

“Next time,” Sasha says, “I promise we’ll give you at least a week’s notice.”

“Great!” Vaughn says. “I mean, I just said _next time_ because that’s what you do, but you know what, you’re right. What am I talking about, of course there’s going to be a next time.” He shakes his head. “Hey. At least it was good to see you.”

“It wasn’t awful,” August says.

“It was good to see you too,” Sasha says, and hugs Vaughn. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Athena just nods at Vaughn, but he grins. “I’ll let you know when we figure out the crop rotation,” he says. “Come spend a week, help with the harvest, pick off mutant skags when you get bored. And don’t do anything stupid,” he adds, to Rhys in particular. “At least not when I’m not there to yell at you. Actually,” Vaughn says, turning to Fiona. “You can yell at him.”

“You couldn’t get me to stop,” Fiona says, and grins. “Take care, Vaughn.”

When they start moving again, Fiona climbs out and sits on the roof of the caravan for a while; she isn’t too inclined to stay inside, doesn’t feel as if she can be confined to an enclosed space, wants to see every second of this. She doesn’t understand, still, what the Vault had wanted, or how it had worked — how it had inhabited her dreams, gotten inside Rhys’ head, found her worst fears and used them like so many strings to make her run — but it had, and now it’s over, and Fiona doesn’t have to understand any of it to know that she’s glad. She still doesn’t know what she wants, not with any sort of certainty, still doesn’t have a plan, but that isn’t new. Maybe this time, when she goes back to short cons and shell games, it’ll stick. Maybe this time she won’t mind. It’s only been a few weeks, but it feels like years. Maybe Fiona will finally stop wanting more, setting her sights on bigger and bigger scores, having dreams too big for the system, let alone the planet.

Maybe she can finally be happy with what she has; maybe it’ll finally be enough. Maybe she can be a good enough person to live with that.

The hatch opens, and Rhys climbs out. “Athena wanted to drive,” he says. “I think she’s allergic to happiness.”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says. “Sometime she smiles on purpose.”

“Usually it’s because something has just died,” Rhys says. “Violently.”

“Happiness comes in, uh,” Fiona says, “many forms?”

“Sure,” Rhys says. “Some of them are just, oh, _murder_.”

“We should have just left you on Sanctuary,” Fiona says. “You could have been decorative and useless, and probably someone would have kicked you off the edge one day when they realized that you can’t shut up to save your life, but it would’ve been funny.” She grins. “Lilith would’ve enjoyed it, anyway.”

“Hey,” Rhys says, going pink. “Look, no, I’m sure she — has important, you know, Vault hunter business or whatever — doesn’t need. Uh. Wait, did you say decorative?”

“And useless,” Fiona says, showing all her teeth. “Pretty, but useless,” she adds, just to watch him getting even more flustered, and watches him flush all across his stupid high cheekbones. Every time that Fiona remembers how much she cares — not really, she doesn’t really care about Rhys; she just likes winding him up and watching him rise to the challenge and the way that he smiles when he’s too surprised to hide it, and that doesn’t count — about this too-tall no-ass overperfumed sock-patterned disaster of a human, she wants to kick out a window and jump to relative safety. “What are you going to do now?” she says, because there aren’t any convenient windows up here, and she doesn’t want to jump that badly.

“I don’t know,” Rhys says. “Same thing, I guess. More prototypes, see if we can expand manufacturing past the Eden system, maybe look into fast travel improvements. So much paperwork, oh my god. So much. Get a new chair. Work on some designs.” He thinks for a second. “Oh, right. Build another stingray. No thanks to you,” Rhys adds, but there’s no real sting to it. “So — yeah — same thing. What about you?”

“Yeah,” Fiona says. “Me too. Keep moving, keep earning. May as well, right?”

“You could always give it another shot,” Rhys says. “The Vault hunter gig, I mean. I could use another scary friend or two. Don’t take this the wrong way — I mean, you’re going to anyway — but Atlas could use a Vault hunter on its payroll.”

Fiona does consider kicking him for a moment, but this is Rhys. An offer of employment is the same thing as a compliment, to him. “Thanks,” she says, finally, “but no thanks. Someone has to do the really indictable stuff, right? That way you get to say you didn’t know anything about it, definitely not, that wall was always a pile of rubble.”

Rhys laughs, a little helplessly, and shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says. “I hope that means you aren’t going to disappear again, though.”

“What was that you said,” Fiona says, “before, was it — oh, right — obnoxious? A pain in the ass?” She grins. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d say that,” Rhys says, and there’s that smile again, too honest to be anything but, and Fiona — isn’t helpless, not quite, but something close, something better — can’t help returning it, anyway.

 

* * *

 

They end up at the Skag, because that’s where they always end up and always have, even before Felix ever got it into his clockwork complication of a brain to try and pass off a forged Vault key, at the end of a long trip or a longer game. Rhys looks uncomfortably out of place for a minute, even though he’s more or less lost all traces of corporate finery — jacket left with the rats, shirt lost to excessively enthusiastic use of tape, borrowed shirt much the worse for wear — and then Jimbo reaches for the bottles that August keeps under the bar, next to the shotgun and the cosh and more or less as deadly, and it’s more or less moot.

It’s good. It’s uncomplicated and good, to be here, surrounded by friends — and strangers, but Fiona picks up friends at an astonishing speed once word gets around that she’s drinking for free — and laughter and music and noise. The room is spinning, light and sound and smiles, and the drinks keep coming, and Fiona doesn’t look back. She tells stories, she supposes, and meets a lot of people who she doesn’t remember a second later, and at some point someone pulls out a deck of cards and deals.

They’re a little too drunk to play competent cards, but not drunk enough to write the game off altogether; Fiona keeps her cards covered, because some habits are too old to break even for the sake of the story, and she knows all Sasha’s tells, knows that August doesn’t care whether he wins or loses, and Rhys is always playing to win, but Fiona thinks that she might be able to tell when he’s bluffing, now. “Fold,” Rhys says, and she grins in triumph.

“Call,” Fiona says, cards a tight fan in her hand, close to her chest, and there’s no way she can lose; nothing can go wrong, not for her, not tonight.

Nothing changes — the lights don’t flicker, nobody stops talking, the room is exactly the same as it was a moment before — but she feels it, the moment that it starts, the moment that the world moves under her feet and leaves everything, somehow, the same. “Fiona?” Rhys says, and she’s on her feet, cards abandoned, and she was going to win — she had the winning hand — and none of it matters.

The lights flicker.

“It isn’t over,” Fiona says, far past dread, far past fear, far past anything but resignation. “We have to leave, we have to run — get out — we have to go,” she says, voice too ragged for a shout, but Fiona tries anyway, and then she hears the noise, like thunder, an endless booming roll that goes on and on and cracks like the world splitting in half.

The room goes quiet.

“Hell,” August says, and tosses his cards down. “I was losing anyway.” He gets up. “What are you waiting for? Get out, all of you. Party’s over.” He turns to Fiona. “Why,” August says, with infinite patience, “are we running?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona says, “but if we don’t, I think—” She pauses, and goes on: “—it’s still happening. The decay, the Sleeper, whatever it is, it’s still happening. Maybe this is what happens when it wakes up, but I saw mountains crumbling like nothing, August, _and we’re in a cave_.” It dawns on him, slowly, and Fiona is almost frantic by the time that Athena plants an elbow in Fiona’s back and relentlessly walks her towards the door.

“Panic later,” Athena says. “Run now.” She crosses her arms and glares at Rhys, standing uncertainly by the table, and Sasha, never one to pass up an opportunity, straightening up from behind the bar with August’s shotgun over her shoulder. “You know how to run, don’t you? You just—” She crosses the room and jabs Rhys in the ribs. “—throw yourself forwards, and keep going.”

“I think I can manage that,” Rhys says, outraged, and Athena glares.

“Then what are you waiting for?” she says. “Out!”

 _Bluff like hell_ , Fiona thinks: she hadn’t understood, in the dream, and she had trusted its logic, and she had tried to run the same game twice — _want to bet?_ — and it had never been about her, anyway. The Vault had let her win once, and had counted on her to be stupid enough to try the same trick again, and Fiona had fallen for it. She had thought that she knew the rules, and could cheat, and she had been wrong, because she had trusted the wrong rules to begin with. Fiona hadn’t been the one bluffing. It had been the Vault, the entire eridium-riddled game of it, all of Pandora playing a game that Fiona had been too invested in to understand, and she had gone all on what she thought was one last bet, and it hadn’t been about that at all. She hadn’t even been playing the right game.

Misdirection, the oldest trick in the book: Fiona had been too close, and hadn’t seen what was going on until far too late, and she stumbles out of the Skag and blinks in the sudden light, bright and shifting and entirely unfamiliar in Hollow Point.

The walls, the spires, the ceiling far overhead — even on a good day, it’s hard to see from one side of Hollow Point to the other, call it cast in shadow or just plain dim; Fiona’s been from one side of the cave to the other, but she’s never seen it like this — all of it is lit up like Mercenary Day, like an ember flaring into flame, like sunrise.

 _What comes next?_ Fiona thinks. What always comes next — sunrise on Pandora, and she could close her eyes if she wanted, but Fiona would still be able to see the patterns, the branching cracks in the stone, the ingress of light like pulse-driven poison, a heartbeat at a time — and she doesn’t think about what that means. Dreams haven’t served her so well lately anyway.

Fiona does know, though — from dreams, and nightmares, and seeing it every time she closes her eyes — what the light means, and where it comes from: Hollow Point is putting up a fight, but the light is bright, true eridium-purple, the color of the Vault, and it won’t do any good.

She can’t stop this; all Fiona can do is stand, and watch, and the ground shifts under her feet. Athena is right behind her. “Move,” she says, “unless you want to die here.” She gives Fiona a shove, pushing her towards the caravan. “Come on, Fiona! Let’s go!”

Fiona goes, and she wants to — so badly that her chest hurts, so badly that she can barely breathe — but she doesn’t, in the end, not even when Rhys pulls her into the caravan, and not even when Sasha climbs past her, and not even when they start moving. She doesn’t do it when August snarls in fury, and looks as if he’s going to punch the wall, and holds himself in check; she doesn’t do it when Athena curses under her breath; she doesn’t do it even when the screaming stars, because Fiona knows how stories work, and she knows better.

They drive out of Hollow Point — dust and rock and light, the ground shifting as they go and the ceiling crumbling behind them — and Fiona doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

There’s nothing pretty — nothing majestic, nothing beautiful, nothing particularly salvageable — about the way that Hollow Point comes to pieces behind them, not really. It isn’t even a good story, and it won’t be for years to come, too vivid and harsh and real to be anything but; a thousand tons of rock collapsing in on itself is barely comprehensible by any ordinary standard, and Fiona isn’t exactly objective about this in particular. She’s never had a home, never expected to have one, but for better or worse, Hollow Point had shaped Fiona: living in the dark taught her to grow towards the light, to make use of the shadows, to work as a team and to throw a solid punch and to take care of herself.

There are good people, too, who live there, and Fiona knows that they won’t all be able to make it out. The caravan is one of the first vehicles through the tunnel, and behind them it’s already far too easy to tell that people are panicking, and trying to make it on foot, and dragging each other back in the way that crowds only do when they’re truly terrified. Nobody knows what’s happening besides them, all crammed into a secondhand stripped-down gutted clunker of a vehicle, and they make it out before the fear can really set in — before people can start fighting their way out, too scared to think of anything but survival.

It’s the most mixed of blessings: if they stayed, maybe they could help; maybe they could make sure that more people get out, or do something other than run, but since they don’t, at least she doesn’t have to watch. At least she doesn’t have to hear what it sounds like when thousands of people realize that they’re trapped. At least Fiona doesn’t have to see what happens next.

She feels it, though, the same way that she’d felt it when the sky had split open, like the slow collapse of her ribcage; there’s no avoiding that. It hurts, more than she can say, and more than she’ll be able to remember: Fiona knows what broken bones feel like, the shock and the sharp pain and, afterwards, the strange mercy of forgetfulness. It’s hard to remember how much something hurts when it removes her capacity to feel anything else, and the ache of it — the relentless pressure, as if she’s trapped underground with nothing to do but wait — crushes the air from her lungs and the joy from her mind and the hope from her heart.

There isn’t any turning back now, anyway, now that Fiona doesn’t have anywhere to go back to, now that she has no choice but to fight or flee. She doesn’t know where they’re going, and she doesn’t ask. Fiona sits, and she stares at the opposite wall, and after a while she lies down and stares at the ceiling instead — and it isn’t just her, Hollow Point was Sasha’s and August’s too, she shouldn’t be trying to claim this grief for hers alone, she shouldn’t be going cold and quiet and frozen like this — and thinks: selfish, immature, get up, Fiona, don’t just lie there. Do something.

Fiona doesn’t know what, though — what to say, what to do, any of it; she tries to think of anything else, and comes up blank — and the futures, all the hundred thousand possibilities, simply aren’t there. She reaches for them, steps out into open space, and nothing is there to catch her, not a story or a lie or anything but empty space, and Fiona falls, the way she’s always known she has to someday. She falls, and keeps falling, and any moment she’ll hit the ground; any moment, she’ll wake up, and she braces for impact because she doesn’t know what else to do, and it never comes.

After a while, Fiona realizes that her face is wet, and she rubs at her eyes and digs at the grit with her knuckles and uses the backs of her hands to scrub away the dust. At least it’s something to do, better than waiting for a blow that has already fallen, and so Fiona does what she always does when she’s alone — she checks her gun, spins the chamber to make sure that it isn’t full of dust, cleans the tarnish from the etchings with the end of her sleeve — because it’s something to do, and it isn’t too difficult, and she always has an ace up her sleeve, if it comes down to it. She always has at least one shot — a last resort or a million-to-one chance — and Fiona won’t throw that away, no matter how badly she’s hurting.

Eventually, for lack of a better option, Fiona rolls over on the bunk — face to the wall, shoulders drawn up, knees pulled to her chest — and closes her eyes, and tries to sleep, because it’s better than being awake. It’s better than thinking, and feeling, and hurting. Selfish or not, at least she can have this for a few hours; at least she can disappear, hurt and scared and getting everything wrong, and nobody can follow her.

If Fiona is asleep, then nobody can ask her what to do, or where to go, or why, and she can’t ruin that as well. She can be, for a few hours, alone with her nightmares and her monsters and herself, and then she can get up, and then she can put one foot in front of the other, and then she can keep fighting.

Until then, Fiona runs, in the only way that she has left.

 

* * *

 

“Fiona?” a voice says. “Fiona, are you okay?”

Fiona is still asleep — she knows because she hasn’t heard that tone in months, that note of genuine concern and optimism — but it doesn’t matter. Fiona would know that voice anywhere. “I don’t think so,” she says. “It’s okay, Gortys. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Gortys says, doubtful, “but I guess you know best!” She doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then she says: “Are you going to get up?”

“No,” Fiona says, because this is her dream, and that means that she doesn’t have to do anything that she doesn’t want to; if she wants to lie here, cool stone pressed to her cheek and bruising her ribs and knuckles, then she can. “I like it here.”

“It doesn’t look very comfortable,” Gortys says, “but people do lots of things that don’t make sense.”

“You’re telling me,” Fiona mutters.

“Yes, but that’s why they’re so interesting!” Gortys says. “Anyway you have to get up. You can’t see this if you’re lying on your face, unless you have eyes in the back of your head, which seems like something you would have mentioned, so you have to get up now! Fiona,” Gortys says, and tugs at her ankle. “Fiona!”

“Okay!” Fiona says, and rolls over. “I’m up! Okay!”

“Hey, Fiona!” Gortys says, immediately looming directly into her field of vision, and waves. “It’s so good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you too, Gortys,” Fiona says, because she really can’t think of any other response. “What am I supposed to be looking at here?”

“Oh,” Gortys says, and points. “That. Was that always there?”

It takes Fiona a moment to realize — Elpis, she thinks, Gortys is pointing at Elpis; hasn’t she seen it before? — but she’s wrong. Gortys can’t be pointing at Elpis, because they’re still in Hollow Point, and she can’t see the moon from here. The cave is empty, save for rubble and shadows and rising dust, and as dark as it’s ever been except for a dim blue glow, growing brighter as Fiona watches.

There’s something set into the ceiling, too precisely rounded to be a crystal and too dim to be any sort of floodlight, like an old satellite or some defunct defense initiative, a weapon left to spark its way into obsolescence. Fiona stares at it until her eyes have adjusted enough to see that it’s cracked down the middle — glass, then, like a massive lens — and then she recognizes the color, that precise shade of mercury-gas blue. It isn’t a weapon or a spotlight or a lens: it’s an electric eye, an implant broken imprecisely down the middle, and as Fiona watches, it flickers, like an interrupted transmission from a long way off.

If it’s trying to say something, it isn’t in any code that Fiona can understand. “Huh,” she says.

“That’s what I thought too!” Gortys says, trundling indiscriminately back to Fiona’s side, and then over her fingers. Fiona winces. “Should we say hi?”

“I think,” Fiona says, “that would be a terrible idea.”

“Oh,” Gortys says, and looks sad for a moment before she brightens up. “Well! I know! We can go say hi to someone else instead! That would be fun, right? I know you’d enjoy it.”

“Okay, Gortys,” Fiona says, because she’s a soft touch for robots who can’t help trying, no matter how cynical she gets. “Let’s go say hi. Wait. Who are we saying hi to?”

“Well,” Gortys says, as if she isn’t quite sure how to explain, and is hoping she’ll have figured it out by the time she’s said it. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Why don’t we just go,” Fiona says, because she isn’t sure if she can physically withstand Gortys’ attempts at enthusiastic explanation, “and you can tell me when we get there?”

“That’s a great idea!” Gortys says. “Right this way!”

She leads Fiona through the rubble and up the tunnel and out of the dark — into the sun, and then stops, and Fiona blinks in the sudden light for a moment, unable to see until her eyes adjust.

“See?” Gortys says, somewhere next to Fiona’s knee. “I told you this would be fun! Hi, Sasha!”

“Hi, Gortys,” Sasha says, and laughs, and Fiona can see a little more now, blinking the glare from her eyes, but it doesn’t make much difference. It isn’t so much the sun as Sasha, her smile and her straight back and her shoulders squared, going down on one knee to give Gortys a high five. “It’s good to see you.”

“That’s what I said,” Gortys says. “And Fiona said so too! I’m so excited. Are we going on another adventure?” She cracks the knuckles of her armature-hands, a series of tiny clicks, and Fiona can’t help smiling. “That’s so exciting!” Gortys lowers her voice, and her eyes light up. “The world isn’t ready for this.”

“I don’t think we’re going on an adventure,” Sasha says. “I think it’s just Fiona this time. She has to do this herself.”

“Uh, no,” Fiona says. “When did I say that? No I don’t. I definitely have no idea what you’re talking about. Or what I’m doing.”

“No, I was kidding,” Sasha says. “Plus it seemed like the right thing to say. Anyway, you’ll be fine. You’ve got this.”

“Yeah!” Gortys says. “What have you got?”

“I don’t know!” Fiona says. “A lot of questions. I mean, I’m here because I can’t even deal with sitting up right now. Not exactly a great start.”

“Nah, you’ve got this,” Sasha says. “You have everything you need.”

“Not again,” Fiona says. “What? What do I need? Seriously, I could use a hint. Everyone says that I know what to do, I have everything I need, it’s all up to me. What do I have to do? Why me? I’m a disaster! All I do is fuck it up, every single time! All I have is a pile of mistakes.”

“No you don’t,” Gortys says. “Nobody can get it wrong every single time! That’s statistically unlikely.”

“Yeah, well, have you met me?” Fiona says. “Hi, I’m Fiona, and everything’s my fault.”

“You’re wrong,” Sasha says, quietly. “You’re wrong, Fiona, but that doesn’t matter anyway.” She straightens up, and puts her hands on her hips, and looks Fiona in the eye. “Your faults are what keep you going,” Sasha says, “and I wouldn’t trade them for all the answers in the world.”

“Yeah, well,” Fiona says. “You don’t have to live with them.”

“No,” Sasha says, still quiet. “No, I don’t, but you do, and I don’t think hating them is the way to go.” She lays her hand on Fiona’s shoulder, so certain of herself that Fiona wants to look away, and so bright and brilliant and strong that she can’t, and says: “Fiona, listen to me — you’re wrong, and you aren’t going to believe me, but I know, okay? I’m your sister. I know. Fiona — your faults are your greatest gift.”

Fiona — laid bare, gut-shot and bleeding out, unable to hide in the clean simple sunlight — has no reply to that.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Gortys says in a small voice, “but Fiona, I think you have to go. I think you need to wake up.”

“I don’t want to,” Fiona says. “Can’t I stay here?”

“You’d hate it,” Sasha says. “You’d be so bored.”

“Fiona!” Gortys says, and Fiona nods, because Sasha’s right. She always is.

“Hey,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Fiona!” Sasha shouts — outside the dream, too real to be anything else — and Fiona closes her eyes against the light, suddenly too bright for her to stand, and when she opens them again, the caravan is still, and she’s awake, and her face is wet.

Fiona only ever cries when she’s angry, too furious to do anything else, but she doesn’t remember why.

“We have a problem,” Athena says, standing by the bunk, and Fiona pushes herself upright, rubbing her eyes, and swings her feet to the floor.

“What?” Fiona says. “What’s happening?”

Athena crosses her arms, and she doesn’t look at Fiona when she says: “You need to talk to Rhys.”

 

* * *

 

They’ve stopped in the middle of nowhere — no landmark, no ruins, nothing to mark the spot — and so it only takes Fiona a moment to spot Rhys when she climbs out of the caravan. He’s standing a little way off, enough so that it’s a walk, but not far enough that Fiona couldn’t shout to him if she needed; she doesn’t, and crosses the distance between them. There’s something about his stance that isn’t quite right, and Fiona can’t tell yet if it’s a matter of hurt, or anger, or actual injury, so she makes enough noise that he’ll know she’s there and stops a few feet behind him and waits.

“It’s kind of funny,” Rhys says. “When you think about it, we just keep ending up here, don’t we?”

“What do you mean,” Fiona says. “In a caravan? In the desert? Because I hate to break it to you, but that’s kind of definitely not your fault. Or do you mean—” she gestures, uselessly, and goes on: “—us?”

“Let’s say us,” Rhys says. “I mean, not to get all pragmatic or anything, but come on. Let’s say that you knew something was a bad idea, every single time, and you knew better, every single time, and you kept on doing it — over and over — I mean, come on! I know you like your heroes and, let’s be honest, your villains, but who does that? Who,” Rhys says, and laughs before he goes on: “I mean, who’s actually that stupid?”

“Rhys?” Fiona says. “Are you still — are we — talking about the same thing?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rhys says. “You tell me, Fiona,” he says, and her name sounds strange in his voice, as if it means something else, as if he’s talking about a stranger. “What are we talking about?”

“I don’t know!” Fiona says. “You’re kind of freaking me out here. I mean, last time you sounded like this, you—” Weren’t yourself, she doesn’t say, weren’t even there. “—Were kind of in shock,” she finishes, instead, though it falls flat. Handsome Jack isn’t here. Jack is gone. Jack is dead, for good this time, with no way back, so who is Fiona talking to — whose voice is that, saying her name as if they know her by reputation but not reality, who sounds so hungry — who sounds so angry, the sort of slow-burning banked fury that levels cities and brings down mountains. It’s the sort of anger that watches, and waits, and festers; it’s the sort of anger that really, deeply scares Fiona, because she’s felt it, and she knows what it can do, and she doesn’t know how to stop it.

“Fiona,” Rhys says, and this time he draws it out, says her name slow and sweet and so condescending that she could spit. “You don’t get it, do you? That’s — wow — pretty fantastic, I have to say. Man. I knew this was gonna be good, but I guess I thought you were smarter than that. Talk about hitting the jackpot, huh?”

“You’re dead,” Fiona says. “I mean, you were dead before, but you had another chance, and guess what? You screwed that up too. You don’t get another shot.”

“Dead?” Rhys says. “Dead? Oh,” he says, and he sounds like he’s just been given the best gift of his life, delighted and surprised and horribly, horribly superior. “You still don’t know, do you,” he says, and Fiona can hear the grin in his voice, knows it like a skewed reflection, a distorted mirror.

“Don’t know what?” she says, and Rhys turns around. Fiona flinches away — he’s grinning, yes, but that isn’t why Fiona steps back, more instinctive than anything else; that isn’t why she goes terror-still, too tense to move — because his eyes are overcast in that same shade, that same shifting argon-purple, that same fluctuation of Vault-emptiness and sudden horrifying presence.

“Who you’re talking to,” Rhys says, or rather — whatever it is, Fiona wants to say, but she knows by now what that is; her questions have come full circle — Pandora says, through him, a stolen voice and a stolen body and a stolen smile, unpracticed and too sharp at the edges. “I mean, sure, we can pretend that this is Jack again, and you can abandon him all over again. Or we can pretend that this is just Rhys, all along, but you know better, don’t you.” He opens his hands. “You’ve come this far, though. Seems like a pity to leave you in the dark, huh, kid,” Rhys says, taunting; it’s meant to sting, and it does, as much as Fiona hates it. She isn’t that frozen, not yet. “Jack was perfect, you know. All that ambition, all that hunger. This one isn’t too far off, when you think about it.” He grins. “And you have, haven’t you?”

“Let him go,” Fiona says. “What do you even want? We don’t have anything, there’s nothing we can give you; we don’t have anything left,” she says, too scared to be anything but honest, and Fiona refuses to get angry because then she’ll start crying, and she won’t give Pandora that as well. She can have that much.

“You can leave him. You don’t need him anyway,” Rhys says. “Do you know how long it’s been? You don’t even have words for that sort of time. You came here, and you thought you knew what you were doing, and you thought that you could take and take and take and that you could fly away when you were done, but you don’t know anything. You don’t know anything about how that feels, to have everything taken — from your blood and your bones and your heart — and to wait, all that time, for the smallest chance, and then to lose. You don’t know anything about pain,” he says. “You’re so small. How could you?”

“If we don’t matter,” Fiona says, “then why do you need him? What could—” She gestures. “—A planet, all of this, what could you possibly want with one person?”

“It has been such a long time,” Rhys says, and tilts his head, and smiles; he’s getting better at it, but not very much. “Why don’t we start with revenge?”

Fiona panics, then, or maybe she’s been waiting for the excuse, or maybe it’s just a reflex.

She punches Rhys in the neck.

He goes down as if all his strings have been cut, and Fiona sits down next to him, suddenly exhausted, and waits for Rhys to pick himself up.

It takes a while before he pushes himself up to his elbows, but it’s definitely Rhys — no purple to his eyes, no excessive sharpness to his smile — and the way he sounds, groggy and vaguely confused and genuinely concerned, is such a relief that Fiona wants to lie down and stare at the sky until she feels a little less shaky. The sun is about to come up, she realizes, spotting a few last stars near the horizon; they’ve driven all night, and she’s slept through most of it, but Fiona feels it as if she’s been awake the whole time. “What happened,” Rhys says. “What — did I — it wasn’t him, was it?” he asks, and sounds terrified. “I didn’t do anything? Did I — is everyone — are you alright?”

“Yep,” Fiona says, and flops down on her back, because she’s earned it. “That’s definitely you.”

“Fiona,” Rhys says, and sits up, leaning over her. “What happened — I didn’t,” he says, and hesitates. “I didn’t — hurt anybody?”

“You’re welcome,” Fiona says, punch-drunk on the dregs of her terror. “No. Don’t worry. Unless you want me to punch you again.”

Rhys doesn’t protest, doesn’t even laugh at that. “Shit,” he says, and folds over, putting his head in his hands.

“No kidding,” Fiona says, and she doesn’t want to ask, but she can’t help herself; she has to know, so she pushes herself up and tips her head back and closes her eyes and gets it over with. “What the hell was that?”

 

* * *

 

In retrospect, Fiona thinks, she should have known, or she should have noticed, or she should have been able to tell; reading people is what she does, but Rhys — she’s never quite been able to get a read on him, not properly, no matter how hard she tries, because Rhys — is difficult. She thinks the worst of him, and then she thinks the best, and each time she’s wrong, and she’s overthinking it, and then she’s wrong all over again.

She isn’t the only one with bad dreams, and Rhys had said as much: that he isn’t sure who he is, not when he’s asleep, isn’t sure if he’s making his own decisions, or just following the path laid out for him, the only way forward; wind him up and watch him go, Fiona thinks, and he hadn’t even been sure if he be able to tell, one way or another. Fiona sits, and she listens, and she can’t help thinking that maybe she should have asked a little sooner.

"You know, I think he's still in there," Rhys says, so matter-of-fairly that it takes Fiona a moment to understand. “Jack, I mean. All the hardware or whatever — that's just," he gestures, "the interface. Like, it doesn't matter if I can see him or if he has system permissions or not. Some days I'll say something, or I'll look at a deal, and I get this sense that it isn't me, right? That this isn't what Rhys — what I — would do. This isn't how I'd act." He shrugs, expressive in his exhaustion. "Jack always said he'd wait until I had my guard down."

“Jack would have said anything,” Fiona says. “Most people do, when they’re that desperate.”

“Sure,” Rhys says, “but he doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to, you know, staying dead.” He looks at the ground. “You know what the worst part was? When he was in my head, back then, when I thought he might actually be on my side. When I trusted him.” Fiona doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t think Rhys expects her to, anyway, and after a second he goes on. “He didn’t actually say anything to me that I wasn’t already thinking. Hell of a kicker, right?”

“Rhys,” Fiona says, “the difference is that you didn’t actually decide to take over Pandora.”

“I crashed a space station full of people into the planet to save myself,” Rhys says. “You know what else he said? _Everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story_ , that’s what he said. Right before he started begging, right before he got desperate, and you know what? He was right. That’s what you tell yourself, right? Someone has to do it. This time it’ll be different. That’s what everyone thinks.”

“I don’t think Jack would have stopped to think about it,” Fiona says, but she’s remembering a shadow, and a smile, and a throne. Nobody likes to think that they aren’t, somehow, right. It’s much easier to justify one decision after another, always for the best of reasons, and in the end it doesn’t make any difference.

“Sometimes I dream that I’m the one trapped in the mirror,” Rhys says. “That Jack — he’s found a way back, gotten out somehow, and that means that I’m the ghost, and he — takes everything, my mind and my memories and my life, and hey.” Rhys shrugs, helpless. “I mean, wouldn’t you do the same thing?” He freezes. “I mean — not that you — I would,” he says, like a confession. “If it was me, I would do anything.”

“No, I would,” Fiona says. “I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t. That’s sort of what people do, you know, when they think it might be over, when it comes right down to it.”

“Yeah, but we’re meant to be better,” Rhys says. “I mean, that’s the point of getting to choose, right? That’s the point of even having a choice to begin with.”

Fiona doesn’t have an answer to that, because she’s thought about it enough. She’s meant to be better, she’s meant to be smarter, she’s meant to be nicer or meaner or any of a thousand things in between; she isn’t supposed to make mistakes, or trust the wrong people, or regret it when she does anyway. She’s the eldest — and the favorite, Vallory had said, back in Old Haven a lifetime ago — and she doesn’t get to fuck up.

“Yeah,” Rhys says. “Look, if anything like that happens again—”

“It won’t,” Fiona says, too quickly, and then: “Look, I’ll just punch you again. I—” Won’t let you hurt anyone, she doesn’t say. “—Can tell the difference, don’t worry,” Fiona says instead. “Mostly.”

Rhys looks as if he wants to say something else, for a moment, and then nods. “Right,” he says. “That was what I was going to say.” It’s a lie; Fiona can tell, not a shadow of a doubt about it. Rhys might be a problem, but she isn’t that bad at reading people, even when it comes to him.

“No problem,” she says. “Come on. Let’s just — get going, right? We—” Fiona pauses. “We don’t have to explain, not yet, if you don’t want to.” She gets up. “Coming?”

“Thanks,” Rhys says, and gets up to follow her a moment later. “Not yet.”

 

* * *

 

A few hours later — noon or a few hours past, Fiona thinks, but she really isn’t paying much attention; the sun is high in the sky — they’re still moving, and that’s what counts. In lieu of staring alternately at his hands, the wall, and Fiona, August is helping Athena navigate, and so when Sasha comes down from the roof of the caravan she looks around for a moment before sitting down by Fiona. “Hey,” she says, quietly. “Are you okay? Stupid question, I know, but.”

Fiona nods. “You know,” she says, and Sasha nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “In that case, you should see this.” She nods at Rhys. “You too.”

Fiona follows Sasha, up the rungs set into the wall and out onto the roof, and uses the railing that runs around the edge to pull herself up. “That,” Sasha says, as Rhys climbs up after them, and points at the horizon behind them, the wheel tracks that they’ve left and the dust in their wake.

If Fiona wasn’t looking for this — hadn’t been more than half expecting it, ever since Sanctuary — she would miss it, but she doesn’t even need to look particularly hard to see that the mountains behind them have split, a jagged break between peaks, and that the point of breach is eridium-lit and expanding by the minute. It’s a long way off, still, but Fiona can tell that it’s getting brighter, like the single point of a sunrise, more visible the longer she watches.

“It’s following me,” she says, mostly to herself. “Isn’t it?”

“What?” Sasha says. “No, it can’t be. How — it’s eridium, right? It can’t know — can it?”

Fiona and Rhys look at each other. “It’s following us,” he says, instead of answering, and Fiona knows that he’s right. “Both of us.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sasha says. “It’s a — it isn’t some kind of — it’s an element, it isn’t some kind of homing missile!”

“It isn’t the eridium,” Fiona says. “It’s Pandora, all of it. It’s the whole planet. That’s the Sleeper, isn’t it?” she says to Rhys. “It has to be. Some sort of—” and she gestures, encompassing the ground and sky and everything in between. “—All of this.”

“I don’t know,” Rhys says. “But — yeah — looks like it.”

“Guys,” Sasha says, “you’re getting kind of cryptic here. Help me out?”

“It’s — where stories come from, right — nobody knows,” Fiona says. “That’s the point. They just start one day, and then you have a planet full of speculators looking for a Vault, and then — worse luck — someone actually finds it, and you think, sure! The stories were true. It must have been the archaeologists, or Atlas on Promethea, or maybe someone heard a story that one time from a friend of a friend who owned a bar on Demophon or something.”

“Okay,” Sasha says. “With you so far.”

“Right, but nobody ever asks where they start!” Fiona says. “Nobody ever goes back and finds the friend of a friend’s bar, or asks the archaeologists why they were looking in the first place, or even asks why anybody would station the Lance on a hellhole like Promethea. It’s a good story — worth dying for — so why ask questions. Nobody really wants to know. Nobody wants to ruin it.”

“Maybe it’s just what people do,” Rhys says, and Fiona nods. “Maybe it’s just luck. Or maybe some places just — have that much history, that much weight — have so much presence that stories are drawn to them. Like falling into a gravity well.”

“It’s why we always end up doing this,” Fiona says. “I mean, you’ve heard all the stories before. Don’t look back; always push the big red button; if it’s a million-in-one chance it’s as good as certain: there’s a reason they keep coming up. A good story,” she says, “goes on forever.” Fiona looks at the fault line, a barely visible fissure now that it’s out of the mountains, following them an inch at a time with all the patience in the world.

For a moment, none of them say anything, and Fiona thinks: somebody has to say it, now. Somebody has to give voice to the answer hanging between them, because that’s how this works, and that’s what happens next. It always is.

“I think Pandora wants someone to speak for it,” she says, voice distant. “I think it’s tired of laying paths and setting traps and shaping stories. I think it wants to start telling them,” Fiona says, and knows as she says it that she’s right, because it settles into place as if it’s meant to fit perfectly, and that’s always part of the story too.

 

* * *

 

After a while, Sasha asks: “So what happens if Pandora gets it — a speaker, that is, or a — body or whatever it wants? Is that really so bad?”

“I mean,” Rhys says, “I guess—”

“I don’t think it plans to give it back,” Fiona says. “I mean, stories don’t really leave a lot of room for people. Happily ever after doesn’t really work like that. I don’t think you can come back from that,” she says, and that fits, too, and she hates it. She hates that she knows this story, can tell it even though she’s never heard it before in her life, and that in doing so she’s helping it carve its outline into the world, giving it more weight even as she tries to find some other way.

“—I guess that isn’t so bad,” Rhys finishes, quiet in a way that scares Fiona even more than his previous anger or his sadness or even his chronically misplaced confidence.

“What do you mean?” Sasha says, before Fiona can protest.

“Well, it’s just one person, right?” Rhys says. “Against a whole planet. It isn’t that hard to do the math.”

“It isn’t math!” Fiona bursts out, because that isn’t how it works — one person is still a person, still has more stories to live than they can ever know, still shapes the lives of the people around them, still matters — but Sasha looks like she understands, and Fiona doesn’t see how they can just sit and discuss this so calmly.

That’s always been her problem, Fiona thinks; not that she loves stories, and not that she never has a plan, and not that she’s selfish or any of the million thoughts that creep in when she’s tired: Fiona is used to those. Fiona can carry their weight, hidden under her ribs, and never show it, but her real problem is that she cares — so much that she can’t do anything else, sometimes, and she catches the way that people look at her then: poor Fiona, such a bleeding heart, so messy, so obvious — and she can’t help it, and she’s far better at it than she’d like to be, and she doesn’t want to change.

That’s selfish too, of course. She’ll have to, sooner or later. Everyone does.

“Fiona,” Sasha says, and Fiona wants to scream, wants to snarl and set her teeth and fight for everything she loves, tooth and claw, until the world either pulls her to pieces or gives her back everything she’s lost, and everything she’ll never have — her home and her family and her friends — but that isn’t what she’s meant to do, and Fiona’s eyes are stinging, and she turns away.

“It isn’t about the numbers,” she says, through gritted teeth, and doesn’t blink, because if she does she’ll cry, and then she might never stop. It isn’t fair. It’s a childish thought, and Fiona hates it, but it isn’t fair, and she can’t fix it, and the injustice of it makes her furious. “It isn’t about that,” Fiona says, aware of how useless she sounds, and climbs through the hatch and clings to the ladder and stares at the wall until her eyes are dry again.

After a while, Rhys climbs back down and sits beside her on the bunk. “We really fucked this one up,” he says softly. “Didn’t we? Don’t tell me we didn’t.” He looks at his hands, folded in his lap, and then at Fiona, and she — doesn’t know what to say — doesn’t nod, but doesn’t have it in her to disagree. “Yeah,” Rhys says, still quiet, but he sounds certain now. “The least we can do is try to make it right.”

“There isn’t any way to do that, though,” Fiona says. “I mean, yeah, we did. We got pretty much everything wrong, but it wasn’t ever about us.” She picks at a loose thread at her cuff, looks anywhere but at him. “We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“For us,” Rhys says. “Not for Pandora.”

“I guess not,” Fiona says. “But — look — it isn’t worth it,” she says, bumping his shoulder with hers. “None of this. We should run, get off-world and keep going, right? There has to be at least one nice planet out there.”

“That would be the sensible thing to do,” Rhys says, and Fiona manages a smile at that, because she only ever says that before she does something colossally inadvisable. It’s nice to know that some people actually mean it. “I can’t believe you actually have a plan,” he goes on, and Fiona half-shrugs.

“It isn’t much of one,” she says. “But hey, it’s better than nothing, right?”

“Nah,” Rhys says. “Let’s wing it.” He puts his hand over hers, stilling her fingers where Fiona is still picking at her sleeve. “I’m going to drive for a while,” he says. “Distract myself or whatever. Get some sleep, okay? We’ll figure it out.” He brushes her hair out of her face. “I promise.”

“Don’t say that,” Fiona says. “It makes me nervous.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Rhys says, and gets up. “I appreciate it.”

“Any time,” Fiona says, and curls up against the end of the bunk. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I don’t,” Rhys says, or Fiona thinks that he does, but she’s tired — angry, and scared, and out of options — and maybe, she thinks, she’s imagining it.

Fiona hopes that she isn’t, but by the time she realizes that, she’s half-asleep and grateful for it.

 

* * *

 

The first impression she gets is one of wings — hundreds, it seems, folding and unfolding — and, paradoxically, of the unseen; Fiona blinks, and what she had taken for feathers become a strange heat haze. What she had assumed to be flames is plating of some sort, armor or chitin or neither, and the air is whispering in languages that she can’t understand, and Fiona doesn’t know how she can hear an echo when nobody is speaking, but she can.

“Hello?” Fiona calls, and there’s the echo. “Is anybody there? Anyone? No?”

“Not yet,” say a multiplicity of voices as one. “Now is not the time. Soon, yes, but until that time: know that you are being watched. Know that, sooner or later, you must give an account. Know,” they say, “that you already have everything you need.”

The echoes fade, and so do the wings, and Fiona looks down and sees Pandora at her feet.

She might be standing in space, or she might be standing somewhere else entirely; it doesn’t seem to matter much, and a moment later, Fiona has solid ground beneath her feet — Pandoran stone, rust-red and barren — and a moment after that, stains begin to spread through it, like ink bleeding through paper.

Like so much in Fiona’s dreams, the gradual diffusion of color is a familiar shade of purple, and when Fiona crouches to press her fingertips to the ground, they come away numb and smudged. Eridium, she realizes; it’s eridium, and she can see the veins of it, running all the way through the planet like branching nerves, spreading as she watches. It holds the world together, and it’ll tear it apart if Fiona lets it, and it consumes itself and remains the same nevertheless.

If Fiona is honest with herself, it’s beautiful — bigger than she can imagine, and more terrifying than she can say — and she watches and, somehow, finds some part of herself entranced.

“I think,” she says eventually, to nobody in particular, “I’m ready for those answers now.”

That same multiplicity of voices echoes around her. “You are still missing a trump card,” they say, and Fiona remembers, and pulls the card from her hat.

“This one,” she says. “No, I’m not.”

“Fascinating,” they say. “A new ace.”

“A what?” Fiona says. “No, this is it. I want to know,” she says. “Why am I here? What am I supposed to do?”

The answer, when it comes, is simple. “Forfeit,” the echoes say, and Fiona stands in the sudden empty silence and thinks about how, all along, she’s been missing something, holding a blank card and an empty hand, and she looks up at the sign for Prosperity Junction, miraculously upright. In dreams, things have a way of doing that — returning to some ideal, some inherent truth of their own — and so it makes sense, then, that it isn’t a bandit corpse hanging from the sign, but Rhys, eyes closed, ankle tangled in wires and ports and filaments of purple light.

Fiona calls his name, and he opens his eyes. “It’s easier than you’d think,” Rhys says, and Fiona climbs the dune towards him. “You just have to let go and fall.”

“You’re being an idiot,” Fiona says, because dream or not, she can’t help herself. “What are you even doing?” There’s a strand of purple around Rhys’ throat, and she wants to pick at it, but something stops her — the look on his face, maybe, oddly serene, or the fact that her fingertips are still numb, and she doesn’t want to leave smudged fingerprints where she touches him — and he reaches out, instead, barely brushing her cheek with the tips of his fingers.

“I forfeit,” Rhys says. “If this is what it takes — if this is the only way — then I choose this.”

Fiona knows that she’s forgotten something — and that it’s important — and that, whatever it is, she already knows; she’s known all along. Of course: Athena had offered Fiona her pick of cards, and she hadn’t thought for a moment that they were anything besides a standard deck, and Fiona’s been playing the wrong game all along, working from a false premise from the start. They’re fortune-telling cards — an easy game, cartomancy, telling people what they want to know — and Fiona knows them from memory. She knows how to weave a different story every time, no matter which cards she draws; she knows how to make it a good one.

Fiona knows what she’ll see, if she turns over the card in her hat.

“No,” she says, instead. “You don’t get to do that.”

“Fiona,” Rhys says, and reaches out again to brush her hair back. Every line of his body strains towards her so that he can reach, and Rhys still only barely manages. He’s so careful that Fiona can’t help but lean into it, even as she thinks: greedy, selfish, fool. “I’m sorry,” Rhys says, and leans towards her, but he’s falling — away, somehow, or she is — and by the time that he says “I already have,” and somehow makes it sound like _I’m sorry_ all over again, he’s gone, gone, gone.

“Wait for me,” Fiona calls, into the darkness. “I’ll find you — I know what to do — I will,” she shouts.

When she wakes up the caravan is still and empty and dark, and Fiona already knows what Rhys — idiot, Fiona thinks, even as she jolts upright; he knows better than most what Pandora does to people who try to be heroes — has done.

 

* * *

 

He’s gone, of course. When Fiona wakes up, Rhys isn’t there — he must have left when they stopped for the night, August says, wandered off, but Fiona knows better — Rhys is gone, missing, lost. It all means the same thing, in the end. He hasn’t left a note, or a goodbye, or anything at all, because that’s what people do when they forfeit: they fold, throw their cards in, and disappear. Fiona knows better than anyone else how easy it is to go really, truly missing, and she knows what it feels like to be doing it for the right reasons, and she knows that the point is not to be remembered, but simply to fade, leaving a slightly better world behind.

It’s a good thing to do, and it’s the right thing — Pandora wants a speaker, Pandora wants a voice, and it’ll pull itself to pieces to get one — and Fiona knows it, even as she hates it, even as she hates Rhys for knowing it too. Being right isn’t a case of knowing; it’s a case of doing.

 _A hero isn’t what you are_ , Fiona thinks. _It’s what you do._

She watches them searching from the steps of the caravan and doesn’t think about how, when it comes down to it, love is doing terrible things so that other people don’t have to; Fiona can’t think about that, because if she does, then she’ll shatter at the gentlest touch.

She can’t afford to do that, not yet.

Athena comes to stand beside her in the glow spilling from the open caravan door. “Maybe it’s better,” she says. “This way.”

Fiona can’t even be angry, because Athena is right. It’s good — it’s better than any of them deserve — and maybe she’s the only one who can’t see that. Maybe Fiona is the only one selfish enough to think: _but what about me?_ What about her, left behind as always, unable to see past her own bleeding heart and empty hands: who cares.

One person in exchange for the world: even Fiona can’t argue those odds, especially given that it isn’t even someone she particularly likes — but Fiona does, she does; she’s grown accustomed to the way that Rhys can’t take a compliment without making an idiot of himself, and the way he fights when he’s backed into a corner, and the way that he looks at her when he thinks that she can’t see — and just because Fiona shouldn’t do it doesn’t mean that she won’t. Just because she should let him go, and not look back, and keep walking, doesn’t mean that Fiona is giving up without a fight.

Rhys had promised, but he’d hidden behind his coffee, too, and told her that she was hot shit, and brushed Fiona’s hair back, and Fiona thinks: some promises deserve to be broken. Some promises deserve to get kicked into shape, at the very least.

“It is better this way,” Fiona says, though Athena doesn’t seem to be waiting for an answer. They’ve been stopped for a while, long enough that Fiona can see despite the darkness that the fault line is still advancing, a distant purple glow, and if she just waits — if she lets Rhys go, and waits, and watches — Fiona knows that it’ll stop. “We should just let him go.”

“Sometimes you say things,” Athena says, “and I just start getting nervous for no reason. Everything you’re saying makes sense. Why do I get the sense you’re about to do something incredibly stupid?”

“Habit?” Fiona suggests, but there’s something in her chest — a spark, the beginning of a laugh, the very hint of a smile — that’s so familiar, and such a relief. It feels like jumping the gap between rooftops, and having no idea if she’ll make it; it feels like getting to say something she’s always wanted; it feels like a story, waiting for Fiona, hers to shape and live and tell and hers alone. It feels like the flutter of wings over open space.

It feels like hope, and Fiona doesn’t try to hold onto it in case she crushes it between her fingers, eager and clumsy with it, but she lets it flutter, and feels suddenly light.

“No,” Athena says. “You are definitely about to do something truly inadvisable.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fiona says, and gets to her feet. “I think I’ll help them look.”

She puts one foot in front of the other, and doesn’t look back. “You jackass,” Fiona says, under her breath. “Why couldn’t it be scythids? Why couldn’t I just hug a scythid and get it over with,” she mutters, still walking.

She just isn’t that lucky, Fiona guesses, and for the first time, she thinks that maybe that isn’t such a bad thing after all.

 

* * *

 

Halfway between the caravan and the chasm, Sasha catches up with Fiona at a flat-out sprint, and spends the next five minutes doubled over to catch her breath. Fiona waits, and manages to hold out for four of them before she starts miming looking at an imaginary watch. She’s halfway through setting up an imaginary sundial when Sasha’s constant and inherent need to make fun of Fiona overrides her need for, apparently, oxygen, and says: “Makes sense. Those were top-of-the-line tech when you were a kid, right?”

“Definitely,” Fiona says. “Rocks! As building materials! Who knew?”

“Fi, it’s nighttime,” Sasha says, because she still has a strong sense of what her priorities are, even when it comes to mockery. “Sundials don’t work at night. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going after him,” Fiona says. “I know where he is. I know what he’s doing.”

“Isn’t that his choice?” Sasha says. “I mean, I’m guessing this is some sort of weird sacrifice play where you go after him and then you fight over who gets to do something stupid and you’ll definitely win, because I know you, and then I’ll—” She pauses. “—I’ll never see you again,” Sasha says, “and the last thing you’ll have said to me is some terrible — I mean, seriously, _awful_ — joke about rocks.”

“I mean,” Fiona says, because she can’t stop herself, “you started it.”

“Wow,” Sasha says. “That’s so much better already.”

“You aren’t helping!” Fiona says. “Look, I can’t just let him go. I know — it isn’t about me, whatever, I know all that, but — if I let him leave, if I just forget about all of this and go back and do the same thing all over again, I know that I’ll be fine. Eventually, anyway. I’ll live.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Sasha says, and Fiona thinks: she’s done all of this, everything since the beginning, to make sure that she’ll never have to watch Sasha do something stupid — slip away, detonator in hand, brave and fierce and beautiful — ever again. It had never occurred to Fiona that Sasha might want the same thing. “I just want you to be alive when this is over. Please.”

The ground cracks, wider, and Fiona’s close enough that she can feel it, can hear the creak of splitting stone.

“If it means running — all the time,” Fiona says, “one thing to the next — then I don’t know if that’s worth it, Sash. I don’t know if that’s worth it to me.”

Sasha smiles, finally, though it hurts Fiona to see how much it costs her, how strong Sasha has gotten and how she squares her shoulders and carries her head high. “I never could get you to change your mind,” she says.

“Nope,” Fiona says. “Hey, if I’m not back in an hour, keep driving, okay?”

“Please,” Sasha says, instantly dismissive. “Obviously.”

“And come up with some last words for me,” Fiona says. “Make them — I mean, obviously badass, but they have to be realistic too, right? Like something I would actually say. Make them cool — oh, you know what I mean,” she says, and turns away. “You always do.”

“Fiona,” Sasha calls after her, “do you actually have any idea what you’re doing? And don’t you dare say it, not this time!”

The ground is opening more quickly, now, and Fiona can barely hear Sasha over the rumbling of it, but she turns anyway, and raises her voice to be heard over the cracking of rock. “What I always do,” Fiona shouts. “Wing it!”

Not bad, as possible last words go, but Sasha can definitely come up with something better anyway. She won’t, and Fiona can’t honestly say that she deserves it, but she could.

It’s oddly comforting to know, Fiona thinks, even walking towards something vast and ancient and unknowable in its fury, that Sasha still won’t let her get away with anything.

 

* * *

 

The closer that Fiona gets to the fault line, the harder it is for her to tell where she is — the mountains on either side of her look like slag rock, like the points of some unfamiliar skeleton; the canyons are its long bones; the rift is its spine, and Fiona comes to its end and walks along it, eridium shifting under her feet; the sky arches up into ribs — and she keeps going, even as the world changes around her, even as the sky breaks and the ground shifts and the sun goes out.

Some of this is familiar, of course. The great hollow of the giant’s pelvis is crystal or ice, and Fiona knows that if she stays, the mist will rise around her, and she’ll freeze in place; a little further, she thinks that she recognizes a great empty room, all consoles and screens and columns, and if she stays then she’ll have to look, eventually, at the crumpled form on the floor.

Fiona keeps walking.

The giant’s vast, collapsed ribcage is stone shot through with eridium, the remains of Hollow Point, and Fiona doesn’t know what death is waiting for her if she hesitates, but she does know that if she stays any longer then her heart will break.

Its poisoned heart is all twisted metal, a place that Fiona has never been and only recognizes from dreams: a desk, and behind it, the remains of vast windows; underfoot, Fiona can feel glass, or perhaps crumbling stone, and the ground is stained with old dried blood. She doesn’t stay long enough for the shadow to smile at her, this time, doesn’t look for a reflection in the remnants of the windows, doesn’t wait to be found.

Fiona doesn’t feel like making the same mistakes again. Nobody wants to hear the same story twice, anyway.

By the time that she reaches its skull, Fiona knows what to expect: the great glass dome of the abandoned Atlas garden, cracked down the side, spilling light and mist into the darkness, and she steps through and finds herself somewhere completely different. It isn’t the Vault, not quite, because she can see all of it — Pandora, hung in context like a single star in the sky — but it’s close enough, at the center of all things. Fiona thinks that, eventually, she was bound to end up here.

There’s a throne in the center of the Vault — there always is; what’s the point if there isn’t — but it’s occupied.

 _You already have_.

Fiona looks up, and she’s sitting on the throne, and she’s standing at the entrance to the Vault, and other-Fiona — Fiona on the throne, ascendant, eyes aglow and smile triumphant — says: “So now what?”

 

* * *

 

After a moment, Fiona looks away — it’s strange, like watching a recording of herself, but she never knows what she’s going to do next — and shifts her weight, squaring her shoulders. “Where’s Rhys?” she says.

“Oh, come on,” other-Fiona says. “You aren’t here for him. Seriously? You think he’d do the same?” She pauses, pretending to think. Fiona knows that expression: she’s enjoying herself, waiting for the right moment to strike. “He might, actually,” other-Fiona says. “He really does care about you. I couldn’t tell you why, though,” she goes on. “I mean, what makes you so special?”

“My sense of humor,” Fiona suggests. “The fact that I can come up with a bad pun for any occasion. Also, and I don’t expect you to know this, but I’m sort of hot shit.”

“Really?” other-Fiona says, or the Vault says through her, or Pandora says to all of them. “I can’t say I’ve noticed. I mean, you can’t even admit this to yourself, which is kind of sad, but what do you really have going for you? You’re good at running away. You’re good at stealing what you don’t deserve. You’re good at leaving other people to take the fall.” She shrugs. “Not exactly a great combination.”

It isn’t wrong, not a word of it, and Fiona knows that, and it isn’t fair, and it doesn’t matter — none of it — because Fiona can see Rhys now, a crumpled heap by the side of the throne, so unnaturally still that she can’t help but step towards him.

“Oh no you don’t,” the Vault — Pandora — Fiona says, and suddenly she’s surrounded by mirrors, so many that she can’t tell which way is forward anymore. Every time Fiona turns, she sees another self — better, stronger, braver — and all of them are waiting, one hand outstretched. “Why don’t you just hand that last ace over, and we can help,” they say, or the Vault says, or maybe it’s just Fiona. Maybe it’s just inside her head.

“I wouldn’t have let Sasha go,” says one of them.

“I wouldn’t have run,” says another.

“I wouldn’t have come here in the first place,” says a third, and Fiona turns and turns again and loses herself in the reflections.

“Let us help,” they say, and Fiona thinks: what does she have to lose, anyway? Alone, with no weapons and no hope and nothing left but her own truth, looking back at her: what does she have left?

Everything she needs, Fiona thinks, and then wonders why: she wonders where she’s heard that before — in dreams, she knows, and there’s something else — and she thinks of Sasha, steel in her spine and sunlight in her smile, saying: _I’m your sister. I know._

 _Your faults are your greatest gift_.

The mirrors fall away, and Fiona realizes that they’ve been glass all along, and in a minute she’ll be surrounded; in a minute, her other selves will be close enough to touch, and it’ll be too late.

Selfish, they say, or Fiona thinks they do; it doesn’t matter. Nobody. Greedy. Thief.

So what if she's selfish, Fiona thinks, in a sudden burst of fury. So what if she's a thief. So what if she's a small-town Pandoran nobody. She's fought for this and bled for it and given up more than she can understand, even thinking about it now, and she gets to have this. She gets to want it and win it and be selfish and greedy and vicious, fight tooth and claw for what's hers. “No,” she says, out loud.

“No?” other-Fiona says, incredulous. “You want to stay like this forever?”

“No,” Fiona says, again, and she knows what she’s doing — she knows what to do, even though Pandora has been leading her all along — because there are two sides to every story, and maybe she’s always been meant to end up here, but now she gets to tell her side. Now it’s her turn. “I don’t. But I don’t want some sort of, I don’t know, shortcut. I don’t want to cheat my way into being a better person. I want to fight, and I want to fuck up even worse, and then I want to have to fix it. I don’t want it to be easy,” Fiona says. “I don’t want to be someone better. I like this being this one just fine.”

“You’re a fool,” other-Fiona says, and Pandora echoes her voice a thousand times over.

“Sure,” Fiona says, and in a minute, her reflections will tear her apart, but until then: hell if she’s giving up without a fight. "That's the point,” she says, card in hand, “you asshole,” and she tears it in half, lets the pieces flutter to the ground. “If it was that easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

The Vault is, suddenly, empty except for Fiona and her other self and the throne, and Rhys slumped at her feet.

“You’re making a mistake,” other-Fiona says. “You’re ruining a perfectly good story. A king under the mountain, a sleeping hero: who cares? We’ve all heard that before. What about the mountain,” she says, “what about the stone, what about those stories? Imagine what you’d be able to learn.”

Fiona hesitates.

“You don’t even like him,” other-Fiona says, too certain to bother with persuasion. “You said it yourself. Anyway, he’s just a person.”

“Oh,” Fiona says, and sighs. “You had to go and say that, didn’t you. Nobody’s just a person,” she says. “Don’t you get it? That’s why you keep losing! That’s why you’re never going to win. Everyone has a story to tell — everyone has a hundred thousand stories — and most of them are better than yours, anyway.”

“What if I don’t let him go?” Pandora says. “What if I keep him anyway, just because I can?”

“Come on,” Fiona says. “You really think this works like that? You can’t have him,” she says, because she might be talking to Pandora, but that means so much more than stone and ore, so much more than a place. Pandora is the people who live and steal and kill each other on its surface, and Pandora is a legend, and Pandora is a promise — riches and fame and adventure, at the very least — and Fiona’s Pandoran through and through. So this isn’t her dream anymore: it doesn’t matter. She’s playing by Pandora rules now, and that means winning, no matter what it takes.

“What are you going to do?” Pandora says, in a voice like the death of all hope, and laughs. “Love him better?”

Fiona snorts. “Fuck you,” she says. “Welcome to Pandora.” She spins the chamber of her gun, because it doesn’t matter what type of round she uses; she’s a good shot, and she feels like taking her chances. “Eat shit,” she says, and draws — feels the story fall into place, and then away again, taking on a new shape as she pulls the trigger — and in the very last moment, just as Fiona watches her other self’s eyes go wide and empty and shocked, the Vault comes to pieces around them.

In the sudden darkness, Fiona falls.

 

* * *

 

When she finally stops, it takes a while for the world to come back: first, gravel, ground into her cheek, and then the ache in her ribs — at least it isn’t her shoulders this time, Fiona thinks, and then wonders with vague horror if that means she’s planning to make a habit of it — and then she opens her eyes, and pushes herself up onto her elbows, and straightens herself out.

It’s still dark, so they haven’t been gone long, if they’ve been gone at all; Rhys is lying nearby, still not moving, a huddled vague shadow, and Fiona scrambles over to him.

“I swear,” she says, “if you go and die on me after all the shit you’ve put me through, I will bring you back and murder you myself.”

“Oh, god,” Rhys says, eyes still closed. “Why do I feel like I’ve been run over by a whole parade of caravans? Did you run me over with the caravan? Why didn’t you finish the job? Is it because you care? Because honestly you should just make sure I’m dead next time. That would be the nice thing to do.”

“When did I ever say I was nice?” Fiona says, and then remembers to be relieved. “At least you’re talking. I take it all back. I don’t like you at all.”

“Yeah, well,” Rhys says, and opens his eyes, and manages a smile. “I don’t like you either, so we’re even.”

“Screw you,” Fiona says, amiably. “You think I’m hot shit. You said so yourself.”

“Low blow,” Rhys says. “But hey, if we’re doing this, did you really just punch out a planet to get me back? Because I don’t think you’d do that if you didn’t like me. Just saying.”

“I didn’t punch anything,” Fiona says. “I shot it. Get your story straight. That’s way cooler.”

“Yeah,” Rhys admits, “it is.”

“Ha!” Fiona says, and gets up. “Come on, don’t make me drag you back.”

“Not even for old times’ sake?” Rhys says, but he struggles into a sitting position anyway. “Oh, wow. Ow. No, there’s no way this is worth it. Next time you should definitely leave me.”

“No way,” Fiona says. “Not a chance.” She offers him a hand up. “You’re stuck with me.”

“Really?” Rhys says, and lets her pull him to his feet. “It didn’t sound like that to me. Sounded like _you_ were the one stuck with _me_.”

“That means exactly the same thing,” Fiona says. “Unless we’ve decided that words don’t mean anything anymore, in which case—”

“Fiona,” Rhys says, still holding her hand, “just for one minute, would you stop saying ridiculous shit,” and he kisses her, one hand on the side of her face, simple and straightforward and good. “Okay. Minute over. Go back to insulting me.”

“Oh, you asshole,” Fiona breathes, “that’s cheating,” and drags him back down by the shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, “I’ll start making fun of you again in a minute, pretty boy,” and he shivers against her.

“Who’s cheating now?” Rhys says, when he gets his breath back, not a little while afterwards.

Fiona just grins.

 

* * *

 

So: no story, no treasure, no Vault and no Sleeper; nothing but themselves. “What comes next?” Fiona says. “Steal another corporation? Find some other planet to piss off? I could do toast,” she says. “I think I could probably manage that.”

“Let’s fly away,” Rhys says. “Let’s see the Eden system. Let’s go to Dionysia. Let’s go all the way to Olympia and live forever, Fiona, come on, and then let’s come back and do it all over again.”

“Nobody lives forever,” Fiona says, but she’s laughing. “Not even us.”

“Nah,” Rhys says. “Nobody does. But,” he says, and he’s smiling the way he always does when he has an ace up his sleeve, a bet with million-to-one odds, a terrible idea that might just work: “It’ll be a hell of a story.”

The sun isn’t even up yet. This isn’t that kind of story. They’re walking across the desert in the dark, hoping that they’re going in the right direction, without even the stars to guide them this close to dawn; the rift behind them is dark and cold and empty now when Fiona looks back, nothing but stone. The thing about adventuring, Fiona thinks, is that most of it involves going from one place to another, and long stretches of incredible boredom interspersed with possibly fatal excitement. She might not get to pick the story, or even get to tell it afterwards, but then it isn’t about that, in the end. It isn’t really about where she ends up, because Fiona’s too greedy to stay in one place for long. There’s too much left for her to see and do and set on accidental fire for that.

Fiona might not get to pick her story, but she gets to pick the friends who come with her, and the ones she’s made so far have been more than worth it.

So she’s sunk, is what it boils down to: Fiona’s completely sunk. She always has been, from the moment that she made Rhys for a liar, from the moment that she learned all his tells and gave him an equal share in the story. She’s been sunk from the moment that he screwed up their last big score. Fiona doesn’t want an out, and she doesn’t want a happy ending.

It would be easy for her to walk away now, while she’s ahead, and leave all of this behind.

Fiona doesn’t want easy. She never has.

“Then I get to choose where we go first,” she says. “My turn.”

“Make it a good one,” Rhys says, and Fiona grins.

“Oh, I will,” she says. “How about—”

—and, just like that, they’re off.


End file.
